Chinese scientists have built a 'real-life DEATH STAR': Terrifying Star Wars-inspired weapon focuses microwave beams to wipe out enemy satellites

• READ MORE: Scientists reveals how to build a REAL lightsaber 

By WILIAM HUNTER

Chinese scientists claim to have created a 'real-life Death Star' capable of devastating enemy satellites in orbit.

The science-fiction-inspired weapon combines pulses of microwave radiation into a single powerful beam - just like the planet-destroying lasers shown in Star Wars.

In order to merge, the electromagnetic pulses must hit the exact same target within 170 trillionths of a second.

That requires levels of timing more precise than the atomic clocks on advanced GPS satellites - a feat previously thought to be impossible.

However, the weapon has now completed experimental trials for potential military applications thanks to breakthroughs in 'ultra-high time precision synchronisation'.

This could be used for 'achieving multiple goals such as teaching and training, new technology verification, and military exercises,' experts say. 

While the exact details of the weapon remain highly classified, Chinese academic journals suggest that microwave weapons like this are being developed for use in space.

And while it might not have the power to blow up a planet, it could wreak havoc on enemy communications or GPS satellites.

Chinese scientists claim to have created a real-life Death Star weapon which merges pulses of microwave energy to create a beam strong enough to wipe out enemy satellites 

According to the South China Morning Post, the secretive space weapon uses an array of seven microwave-firing 'vehicles'.

These vehicles are positioned over a large area but fire together to hit their target with a single, powerful attack.

The scientists behind the device say that most microwave weapons 'have not formed effective combat capabilities' due to power limitations.

But, by merging several waves into a single pulse, the resulting power can be strong enough to overwhelm an enemy satellite.

What makes this challenging is that combining microwave pulses requires synchronising the bursts with never-before-seen levels of precision.

Even the atomic clock aboard the Chinese Tiangong space station, which only misses one second every few billion years, cannot reach the required levels of precision.

However, Chinese scientists say they have now been able to overcome these challenges by connecting each of the vehicles with fibreoptic cables.

While the exact specifications remain secret, last year Chinese scientists managed to achieve a time synchronisation accuracy of just 10 trillionths of a second over a distance of 1,100 miles (1,800km). 

Just like the Death Star in Star Wars (pictured), this weapon combines separate beams of energy into a single directed pulse 

How does the 'real-life Death Star' work?

1. Seven microwave 'vehicles' are connected by fibreoptics
2. The vehicles use lasers to measure their exact position 
3. The vehicles fire a pulse of microwave energy with extremely precise timing 
4. All seven beams hit the target at precisely the same moment 
5. Enemy satellite communications are wiped out 

To ensure the microwave pulses hit the exact same point, the weapon also uses laser positioning devices to achieve millimeter-level navigation.

By analysing timing and positional data, a mobile command centre can then issue an attack command - triggering each of the seven vehicles to fire at once.

The researchers say that the microwave beams can achieve a combining effect of '1+1>2', hinting that the combined power could be higher than the sum of its parts.

This won't be quite as strong as the devastating power of the Death Star, but the resulting energy pulse could be more than enough to knock out an enemy satellite.

Studies have found that a weapon capable of delivering just one gigawatt of power would be enough to do serious damage to satellites in near-Earth orbit.

In recent years, milliaries around the world have been racing to develop a new generation of 'direct energy weapons'.

Unlike conventional weapons which use projectiles or explosives, these use powerful blasts of electromagnetic radiation to disrupt or destroy their targets.

There have already been significant advances in direct energy weapons which use lasers to burn through the hulls of missiles and drones.

Although it won't be strong enough to blow up a planet like in Star Wars (pictured), the weapon can use its microwave beams to knock out enemy satellites to disrupt communications and navigation 

More national militaries are investigating so-called 'direct energy weapons' which use bursts of high-intensity radiation to destroy or disrupt their targets. These include the British DragonFire laser weapon (pictured)

For example, the British Dragonfire laser weapon is strong enough to shoot a drone out of the air and accurate enough to hit a £1 coin from half a mile away.

Instead of burning through their targets, microwave weapons use intense bursts of electromagnetic radiation to disrupt electrical circuits.

Trials of microwave weapons have already shown that they can be effective against small targets like drones.

The Tactical High-Power Operational Responder (THOR), developed by the U.S. Air Force Research Lab, uses wide bursts of energy to take out entire swarms of drones.

The advantage is that the weapons are cheap to operate and don't use any projectiles, reducing the risk of collateral damage.

However, microwave weapons have proven difficult to target and use at longer ranges.

By overcoming the power limitations, combined microwave energy weapons could be the key to bringing these potentially devastating weapons into the frontier of space warfare.

As militaries become more reliant on satellite observations and communications there has been a growing interest in weapons which can target satellites.

Declassified footage of secret trials (pictured) at the MOD's Hebrides Range, showed that the British laser weapon system proved so accurate it could hit a £1 coin half a mile away

As low-Earth orbit becomes more important for military use nations are developing more weapons to target satellites. This includes the Chinese 'Death Star' microwave weapon and the American 'Meadowlands' satellite jammer revealed last month (pictured)

These satellite networks provide the infrastructure which supports deadly GPS-guided missiles, drone strikes, and troop movements on the ground.

Read More

• Secretive US weapon that JAMS Russian and Chinese satellites is finally ready 

This means that knocking out enemy communication, by electronic or physical means, could provide a decisive advantage in a conflict.

Last month, the US revealed its powerful new satellite jamming weapon designed to shut down Russian or Chinese communications at the start of a conflict.

The weapon has been developed by the Xian Navigation Technology Research Institute under the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation.

This organisation has been a major provider of electronic warfare weapons for the People's Liberation Army in the past.

However, it isn't yet clear when, if at all, this weapon will be deployed.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

07-11-2024 om 20:19 geschreven door peter  

EXCLUSIVE - NASA gives health update on astronauts mysteriously hospitalized after space mission

• READ MORE:  Watch Space Force's top secret spaceplane fly 

By ELLYN LAPOINTE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

NASA today insisted stranded astronaut Sunita Williams is safe and healthy amid growing public concern for her health.

But the space agency again refused to give any details about four astronauts who were mysteriously hospitalized late last month after returning from a separate space mission.

A doctor raised concerns about Williams this week after a photo showed her looking 'gaunt', suggesting she had lost a significant amount of weight after spending more than 150 days stuck on the International Space Station.

But NASA holds firm that Williams and the rest of the astronauts aboard the ISS are doing fine.

'All NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station undergo routine medical evaluations, have dedicated flight surgeons monitoring them, and are in good health,' NASA spokesperson Jimi Russell told DailyMail.com.

Concern over Williams came less than two weeks after the hospitalization of four NASA/SpaceX Crew-8 astronauts, who splashed down off the coast of Florida on October 25. The crew had spent 232 days aboard the ISS. 

One of them was hospitalized overnight due to a 'medical issue', while the other three were discharged that same day after undergoing medical evaluations. 

NASA refused to provide any details about why the crew was hospitalized, which astronaut had to complete an overnight stay, or whether the medical issues were related to their return to Earth.

WEARING ON HER: A doctor has raised concerns about Sunita's health, claiming this September 24 photo showed her looking 'gaunt'

The agency instead deferred DailyMail.com to a blog post from October 26.

The statement said that one of the astronauts stayed overnight at Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola in Florida, but was 'in good health and will resume normal post-flight reconditioning with other crew members' after being discharged.

NASA's decision not to disclose who that astronaut was or reveal details about his or her condition was made 'to protect the crew member's medical privacy.'

While the agency has repeatedly expressed confidence in the wellbeing of its astronauts, studies have shown that  living in space takes a toll on human health.

This is especially true of long-term ISS missions, which typically last six months.

Space is a harsh environment that causes astronauts to lose body fat, muscle mass, bone density, and endure high doses of radiation.

This can lead to a range of health issues, including vision problems, kidney stones and even causing astronauts to become more vulnerable to infections on the ISS.

Williams and her crewmate, Barry Wilmore, have been aboard the ISS for six months as of today, and will remain there until February 2025 at the earliest.

By then, they will be able to catch a ride back to Earth on SpaceX's Crew-9 mission Dragon Capsule. 

All four of the Crew-8 astronauts were hospitalized following their return to Earth, but NASA has not released any details about the reason, or reasons, why

The photo of Williams, taken on September 24, shows her tucking into a pepperoni pizza and chips while surrounded by condiments and other treats.

'Her cheeks appear a bit sunken - and usually it happens when you've had sort of total body weight loss,' Dr Vinay Gupta, a pulmonologist in Seattle, told DailyMail.com.

'I think what I can discern by her face and her cheeks being sunken in is that [she] has probably been at a significant [calorie] deficit for a while.'

Weight loss is not uncommon among astronauts during extended ISS missions. In fact, most lose about five percent of their bodyweight during a four to six month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory, according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute. 

Dr Gupta told DailyMail.com: 'What you're seeing there in that picture is somebody that I think is experiencing the natural stresses of living at a very high altitude, even in a pressurized cabin, for extended periods.'

'Based on what I'm at least seeing in the photo, I don't think she's quite at a... place where I say her life's in danger,' he added.

'But I don't think you can look at that photo and say she has sort of healthy body weight.

As for Crew-9, which included NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, it's possible that their health suffered during their ISS stay as well. 

The four astronauts spent 232 days - or nearly eight months - aboard the ISS. It's reasonable to believe that the stress their bodies endured during that time may have resulted in the need for medical attention upon their return to Earth. 

Alternatively, some have speculated that something went awry during the crew's descent, despite NASA's statement that the crew 'safely splashed down aboard their SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.' 

The fact that all four astronauts received some form of medical attention does suggest that the health issues were somehow related to their return flight.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

07-11-2024 om 19:58 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE: Space plane will execute a 'never-before-seen-maneuver' 

By Nikki Main Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

The Pentagon has kept a tight lid on details about the Space Force's secretive spaceplane that is perpetually flying 500 miles above Earth's surface.

But the Department of Defense (DoD) has released a rare video showing the Boeing-built X-37B spacecraft performing a 'groundbreaking' maneuver to reach a new level of orbit using a first-of-its-kind 'aerobraking' procedure.

The video shows how the $200 million craft point its flat underside forward, using friction from Earth's atmosphere to slow down, treating it like a brake, while directing the nose of the aircraft away from earth.

Boeing engineer John Ealy said: 'When we aerobrake, we utilize atmospheric drag to effectively step down our apogee one pass at a time until we get to the orbital regime that we want to be in.

'When we do this, we save enormous amounts of propellant, and that's really why aerobraking is important.'

The X-37B, roughly the size of a small bus and resembling a miniature space shuttle, launched for its seventh mission on December 29, 2023 and is currently still conducting experiments for NASA before it will return to Earth.

Space Force released a video showing the X-37B spacecraft's 'groundbreaking' maneuver

The X-37B aircraft is the first of its kind to use the Earth's atmosphere to reach a new level of orbit using an aerobraking procedure that relies on the friction to slow it down

Space Force has not released information about the spacecraft's main function but has said it will conduct experiments involving 'space domain awareness technologies.'

This could mean that the new technology will be used to keep an eye on other traffic in orbit and observe what other spacecrafts are doing.

The seventh mission marks the first time Boeing has attempted to carry out the aerobraking maneuver.

Aerobraking is a method of slowing down a spacecraft by using the atmosphere or outer gas layers of a planet.

The space plane 'dips' into the atmosphere, and as it does, the molecules of gas in the atmosphere rub against the ship.

This acts as resistance and slows the ship down.

Often a ship will use aerobraking to change an orbit or slow a ship enough so that gravity will pull it down to a planet.

It was designed with a dual purpose of landing like an aircraft on a runway while the service module mounted on the back carries additional payloads, although Boeing has not specified what those will be.

The spacecraft pointed its nose away from Earth as the friction heated up its underside, causing the bottom to cast an orange glow and slow down the vehicle

'Once the aerobrake maneuver is complete, the X-37B will resume its test and experimentation objectives until they are accomplished, at which time the vehicle will deorbit and execute a safe return as it has during its six previous missions,' the Space Force said. 

The seventh mission launched on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, putting it at an undisclosed altitude.

According to the Space Force, it is gathering data for future crewed missions by exposing plant seeds to the harsh radioactive environment in space.

The un-crewed X-37B is a hybrid launch vehicle that can operate as a regular airplane or spacecraft, which was is built using a lighter structure instead of the traditional aluminum and measures 29 feet long, about one-fourth the size of a NASA space shuttle.

It has the ability to perform missions that last up to 270 days to 'support long-term space objectives,' according to Boeing.

The X-37B spacecraft launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in December

Holly Murphy, program director for Boeing's Experimental Systems Group, said in the video: 'X-37B missions have continuously advanced our nation's space capabilities by testing new technologies that reduce risk and inform our future space architectures. Mission seven is no different.'

Space Force's X-37B has so far spent roughly 10 months in orbit but the agency has yet to reveal when its seventh mission will conclude.

However, the aerobraking maneuver that brings it closer to Earth could indicate that it will be returning soon.

The video's release comes as China is testing its own spaceplane, called Shenlong, which recently spent 268 day's in orbit and completed its third mission on September 6.

China is the only other country in the world to have a reusable spacecraft and has raised concerns that these planes will be used to launch microsatellites that could be used for military applications, according to the China Morning Star.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

07-11-2024 om 00:40 geschreven door peter  

New research examines the threats facing the habitable zone planets in our stellar neighbourhood. The study is “The 10 pc Neighborhood of Habitable Zone Exoplanetary Systems: Threat Assessment from Stellar Encounters & Supernovae,” and it has been accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal. The lead author is Tisyagupta Pyne from the Integrated Science Education And Research Centre at Visva-Bharati University in India.

The researchers examined the 10-parsec regions around the 84 solar systems with habitable zone exoplanets. Some of these Habitable Zone Systems (HZS) face risks from stars outside of the solar systems. How do these risks affect their habitability? What does it mean for our notion of the habitable zone?

“Among the 4,500+ exoplanet-hosting stars, about 140+ are known to host planets in their habitable zones,” the authors write. “We assess the possible risks that local stellar environment of these HZS pose to their habitability.”

We have more than 150 confirmed exoplanets in habitable zones, and as exoplanet science advances, scientists are developing a more detailed understanding of what habitable zone means. Scientists increasingly use the terms conservative habitable zone and optimistic habitable zone.

The optimistic habitable zone is defined as regions that receive less radiation from their star than Venus received one billion years ago and more than Mars did 3.8 billion years ago. Scientists think that recent Venus (RV) and early Mars (EM) both likely had surface water.

The conservative habitable zone is a more stringent definition. It’s a narrower region around a star where an exoplanet could have surface water. It’s defined by an inner runaway greenhouse edge where stellar flux would vaporize surface water and an outer maximum greenhouse edge where the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is dominated by Rayleigh scattering.

Those are useful scientific definitions as far as they go. But what about habitable stellar environments? In recent years, scientists have learned a lot about how stars behave, the characteristics of exoplanets, and how the two are intertwined.

“The discovery of numerous extrasolar planets has revealed a diverse array of stellar and planetary characteristics, making systematic comparisons crucial for evaluating habitability and assessing the potential for life beyond our solar system,” the authors write.

To make these necessary systematic comparisons, the researchers developed two metrics: the Solar Similarity Index (SSI) and the Neighborhood Similarity Index (NSI). Since main sequence stars like our Sun are conducive to habitability, the SSI compares our Solar System’s properties with those of other HZs. The NSI compares the properties of stars in a 10-parsec region around the Sun to the same size region around other HZSs.

These indices put habitable zones in a larger context.

“While the concept of HZ is vital in the search for habitable worlds, the stellar environment of the planet also plays an important role in determining longevity and maintenance of habitability,” the authors write. “Studies have shown that a high rate of catastrophic events, such as supernovae and close stellar encounters in regions of high stellar density, is not conducive to the evolution of complex life forms and the maintenance of habitability over long periods.”

When radiation and high-energy particles from a distant source reach a planet in a habitable zone, they can cause severe damage to Earth-like planets. Supernovae are a dangerous source of radiation and particles, and if one were to explode close enough to Earth, that would be the end of life. Scientists know that ancient supernovae have left their mark on Earth, but none of them were close enough to destroy the atmosphere.

“Our primary focus is to investigate the effects of SNe on the atmospheres of exoplanets or exomoons assuming their atmospheres to be Earth-like,” the authors write.

The first factor is stellar density. The more stars in a neighbourhood, the greater the likelihood of supernova explosions and stellar flybys.

“The astrophysical impacts of the stellar environment is a “low-probability, high-consequence” scenario
for the continuation of habitability of exoplanets,” the authors write. Though disruptive events like supernova explosions or close stellar flybys are unlikely, the consequences can be so severe that habitability is completely eliminated.

When it came to the supernova threat, the researchers looked at high-mass stars in stellar neighbourhoods since only massive stars explode. Pyne and her colleagues found high-mass stars with more than eight solar masses in the 10-parsec neighbourhoods of two HZS: TOI-1227 and HD 48265. “These high-mass stars are potential progenitors for supernova explosions,” the authors explain.

Only one of the HZS is at risk of a stellar flyby. HD 165155 has an encounter rate of ?1 in 5 Gyr period. That means it’s at greater risk of an encounter with another star that could eject planets from its habitable zone.

The team’s pair of indices, the SSI and the NSI, produced divergent results. “… we find that the stellar environments of the majority of HZS exhibit a high degree of similarity (NSI> 0.75) to the solar neighbourhood,” they explain. However, because of the wide variety of stars in HZS, comparing them to the Sun results in a wide range of SSI values.

We know the danger supernova explosions pose to habitability. The initial burst of radiation could kill anything on the surface of a planet too close. The ongoing radiation could strip away the atmospheres of some planets further away and could also cause DNA damage in any lifeforms exposed to it. For planets that are further away from the blast, the supernova could alter their climate and trigger extinctions. There’s no absolutely certain understanding of how far away a planet needs to avoid devastation, but many scientists say that within 50 light-years, a planet is probably toast.

We can see the results of some of the stellar flybys the authors are considering. Rogue planets, or free-floating planets (FPPs), are likely in their hapless situations precisely because a stellar interloper got too close to their HZS and disrupted the gravitational relationships between the planets and their stars. We don’t know how many of these FPPs are in the Milky Way, but there could be many billions of them. Future telescopes like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help us understand how many there truly are.

Habitability may be fleeting, and our planet may be the exception. It’s possible that life appears on many planets in habitable zones but can’t last long due to various factors. From a great distance away, we can’t detect all the variables that go into exoplanet habitability.

However, we can gain an understanding of the stellar environments in which potentially habitable exoplanets exist, and this research shows us how.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

06-11-2024 om 23:21 geschreven door peter  

“Our transporter comprises two trailers connected by cradles and a strongback assembly designed in-house,” said Limp on X. “There are 22 axles and 176 tires on this transport vehicle…The distance between GERT’s front bumper and the trailer’s rear is 310’, about the length of a football field.”

Limp said the next step is to put the first and second stages together on the launch pad for the fully integrated hot fire dress rehearsal. The second stage recently completed its own hot fire at the launch site.

Hopefully the test will lead to Blue Origin’s first ever launch to orbit. While the New Glenn rocket has had its share of delays, it seems Blue Origin has also taken a slow, measured approach to prepare for its first launch. In February of this year, a boilerplate of the rocket was finally rolled onto the launch pad at Cape Canaveral for testing.  Then in May 2024, New Glenn was rolled out again for additional testing. Now, the fully integrated test in the next few weeks will perhaps lead to a launch by the end of the year.

New Glenn’s seven engines will give it more than 3.8 million pounds of thrust on liftoff. The goal is for New Glenn to reuse its first-stage booster and the seven engines powering it, with recovery on a barge located downrange off the coast of Florida in the Atlantic Ocean.

New Glenn boosters are designed for 25 flights.

Blue Origin says New Glenn will launch payloads into high-energy orbits. It can carry more than 13 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) and 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit (LEO).

For the first flight, Blue Origin will be flying its own hardware as a payload, a satellite deployment technology called Blue Ring. Even though it doesn’t have a paying customer for the upcoming launch, it would be — if successful — the first of two required certification flights needed by the rocket by the U.S. Space Force so it could potentially be awarded future national security missions along with side SpaceX and United Launch Alliance (ULA.)

Additional details can be found at PhysOrg and NASASpaceflight.com.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

06-11-2024 om 22:43 geschreven door peter  

INVESTIGATORS think they may have discovered two separate alien abductions which happened on the same night and place for the first time in UFO history, The U.S. Sun can reveal.

Witness Maria Blair initially believed she saw a UFO land on the banks of the Pascagoula River, Mississippi, before three creatures kidnapped two fishermen in one of the most infamous cases in the US.

Maria Blair believes she was abducted by the same aliens who took two fishermen in the infamous Pascagoula case

Credit: Philip Mantle/ Flying Disc Press

The aliens were described as having lobster like claws and carrot noses (stock image)

Credit: Philip Mantle/ Flying Disc Press

She also remembered seeing a strange gray man emerge from the water as they stood watching the UFO on the pier on the opposite side of the river.

That is all she could remember for 45 years before her husband Jerry made a death-bed confession that they too had been abducted that night.

Now US-based Dr. Irena Scott, PhD and British UFO investigator Philip Mantle believe the case could the first double abduction in UFO history.

Scott, who has worked for the Defence Intelligence Agency, said: "This event was the UFO abduction account of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker by the Pascagoula River.

"It had great impact and drew international headlines because, unlike most such accounts, they were conscious and reported it immediately.

"Thus, it began as an extremely credible report, but unlike most others, a number of additional independent reports of UFO sightings were made in the area at around the same time.

"Because of the men’s honesty and additional factors, this has become one of the best known of all abductions and it has been termed the best-documented such account on record."

Calvin and his pal Charlie Hickson were fishing on the banks of the Pascagoula River, Mississippi, on October 11, 1973, when a strange oval shaped craft landed in front of them.

The men said creatures with lobster-like claws at the ends of their arms and carrot-like growths for their nose and ears emerged from the craft and grabbed them.

'NO EYES AND SLITS FOR MOUTHS'

The creatures' skin was described as pale in color, wrinkled, with no eyes and slits for mouths.

On the ship, Hickson claimed that he was examined by what looked like a large football-shaped mechanical eye, about 6 to 8 inches in diameter, that seemed to scan his body.

Parker, age 19 at the time, claimed that he could not recall what had happened to him inside the craft, although later, during hypnotic regression he offered some hazy details.

The men were released after about 15-20 minutes and the creatures levitated them, with Hickson's feet dragging along the ground, back to their original positions on the river bank.

STRANGE BLUE LIGHTS

Unbeknown to them, Maria and Jerry Blair were sitting in their car looking out across the river when they saw strange blue lights in the sky.

They watched the strange lights for around 40 minutes before getting out of their car and walking down the pier toward a boat.

As she was walking along the pier, Maria saw something came out of the water on her side of the pier describing it as a gray man.

Jerry dismissed it and they carried on walking.

Maria didn’t think much of it until the next day when the abduction of Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson was reported in the news.

She discovered that their encounter had taken place at the same time the Blairs had been there, but on the other side of the river.

But Maria never talked about it to anyone except her family and Jerry wanted her to keep it quiet because people would think she was crazy.

DECADES-LONG SECRET

She didn’t talk about it for about 45 years, until they discovered that Calvin Parker had finally begun talking about it himself.

Mantle and Dr Scott managed to trace Maria after her daughter Tracee left a message on a YouTube interview with Calvin in 2019.

Scott interviewed Maria and Jerry, who told much the same story, except that Jerry was quite skeptical about UFOs.

Scott was intrigued because Maria seemed very emotional about a thing that came out of the water and looked like a man.

Later Jerry became very ill and died in 2019.

However just before he went on a ventilator, he told Maria that they had been abducted.

He had not talked about this before because of potential harassment.

DEATH-BED CONFESSION

Marie immediately called the investigators from the hospital and said there was something Jerry wanted to tell them.

He said he had seen the same happenings as his wife and remembered more.

Jerry had seen the gray-humanoid creature moving away to the other side of the river.

He also had seen the blue lights on the UFO and saw it shooting off into the sky.

He stated that he had kept quiet for all these years for fear of people laughing at him.

Jerry remembered more than Maria did at that point on the pier. He said some of the beings were 6 feet tall and gray in color.

Two of them grabbed him and got control of him.

ALIEN EXAM

One of the beings stood in front of the others and Jerry thought this one was the leader.

The beings floated them into the object.

He said that they performed an exam on him that he didn't want and was refusing to let happen.

He told that that one of them should have been a doctor and said he kept his eye on that one.

Maria said that Jerry recalled watching them float back across the Pascagoula River until he no longer had them in his sight.

Then he watched the craft shoot straight up and out of sight.

Maria had not remembered the abduction but Mantle was sure that something had happened to them so arranged for her to undergo hypnotic regression last year to jog her memory.

HYPNOTIC REVELATIONS

She was confused and very scared during the session. She didn’t know where Jerry was and wanted to find him.

She thought she was floating in the air. Then she said something was in control of her.

She said that she saw a door opened and a being was taking her to the door, then she was inside.

Maria said she thought she had been given some form of sedative but did not feel any needle.

She didn’t see the beings walk; she said they floated and that they had taken complete control of her mind.

She claimed they laid her on a table and hovered a metal device over her private parts and she thought they were interested in her eggs.

The hypnotist then asked her what the beings wanted to know and she answered that they didn’t want her to know, but she thought their goal was to make children that look like people, so they can live among us.

She said: "[The aliens] need a disguise. They need their children to look like humans. So they can roam the earth and look like us.” 

She told the hypnotist she believed her husband had seen the creatures before and he was protecting her from them.

Under hypnosis, Maria, of Theodore, Alabama, said: “He knew they were going to attack me. He knew that they were going to come get me (crying). I don’t know what he had with them, but he knew.”

'THEY ARE AMONG US NOW'

The hypnotist asked why she was chosen and she said because she was a woman and that the visitors are performing a human/alien breeding program.

She said: “They are among us now.” 

Scott said: "Right from the beginning Maria Blair had the impression that something else had happened to them that night and her husband Jerry finally told her that they too had undergone an abduction encounter.

"Even tough Jerry was very ill at the time Maria was quite angry with him for having kept this a secret for decades. You could say that Jerry was making a kind of ‘death bed confession’ and finally told his wife what had happened. It was obvious that he wanted to get this account out in the open before he passed.

"We must also clarify that Maria and Jerry did not step forward to tell their story. Were it not for their daughters comment on YouTube then we would never have heard anything about it.

"When it comes to the hypnotherapist, a lady by the name of Crystal Slaughter, she was not told anything about the UFO events.

"She was simply asked to take Maria back in time to that night on the Pascagoula River. Once Maria started telling her story under hypnosis Ms Slaughter was very surprised."

Calvin Parker died in August this year after a battle against kidney cancer just before the 50th anniversary of the classic case.

Scott and Philip Mantle's new book BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT – The Pascagoula Alien Abduction - is now out on Amazon.

Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claim they were abducted while fishing in 1973

Credit: Philip Mantle/ Flying Disc Press

{ https://www.thesun.co.uk/ }

06-11-2024 om 01:12 geschreven door peter  

(M. Aiestaran, J. Velaza, et al/Antiquity/Cambridge University)

Archaeologists Unearth 2,000-Year-Old Relic Covered in Mysterious Symbols from Lost Ancient Language

Archeologists in Northern Spain report the discovery of a 2,000-year-old relic in the shape of a hand that is covered in mysterious symbols from an ancient “lost” language.

Previous research into the area’s Iron Age inhabitants seemed to indicate they were pre-literate people without any form of written communication. However, this latest discovery, which they are calling the Hand of Irulegi after the site where it was found, not only refutes that assumption but may offer clues to the origin of the region’s mysterious Basque language, which has no known linguistic relatives.

Mysterious Symbols Cover Bronze Hand

According to a summary of the archaeology team’s research published in the Cambridge University Press Core journal, the relic, which is made of bronze and in the shape of a hand, was discovered at the entrance of an ancient domestic building in present-day Navarre within the northern part of Spain. The researchers note that this particular region of the Pyrenean foothills has received “little attention” from archaeologists, meaning the Late Iron Age societies of this area “remain poorly known.”

In fact, they note that other than a few meager insights from the Roman-period literature, “very little is understood about the language, writing, identity, and beliefs of these pre-Roman Vasconic communities.”

“Relatively few examples of Palaeohispanic writing have been recovered from the Vasconic territories of present-day Navarre,” the researchers explain, “leading to the assumption that the Vascones were a pre-literate society.”

Given these circumstances, the team was somewhat surprised to find a relic covered with a wide array of mysterious symbols of an unknown origin. A close-up analysis of the bronze hand revealed a small hole and four lines of mysterious symbols they interpreted as text.

Interestingly, one of the words written on the hand that could be identified was interpreted to say “sorioneku.” In the Basque language, which still exists in this particular region, the word “zorioneko” means “good fortune.” Given the hand’s location near the entrance of a domestic building and the orientation of the mysterious symbols, the researchers suggest it may have been hung above the doorway to bring good luck.

“The text inscribed on this artifact, which was found at the entrance of a domestic building, is interpreted as apotropaic, a token entreating good fortune,” write the researchers.

“Evidence for widespread burning across the site, combined with the many weapons recovered from the interior of the habitational structures and the quantity and variety of other finds found in primary contexts, strongly suggest that the site was intentionally destroyed by fire,” they explain.

An analysis of the techniques used to create the hand didn’t reveal which tool was used to make the mysterious symbols, but the researchers suppose they could have been made by an iron tool like a Burin.

Another intriguing discovery shows that the inscription methods used to create the symbols seemed to come from two completely different epigraphic cultures. One method, the “punched” method, is consistent with the Celtiberian epigraphic culture, whereas the sgraffito technique is consistent with the Iberian epigraphic culture. The researchers say that no artifacts combining the two methods have previously been found in this region.

“The two-step method, with the use of both sgraffito and punched techniques in the same inscription, has not previously been documented in Palaeohispanic inscriptions.”

Details of the Irulegi hand: a) identical oxidation patina on both the plate and the point; b) punched lettering on incised line; c) ornamental reduction on the perimeter; d) perforation of the lower palm viewed from the front and e) from the back; f–g) details of the fingers and nails; h) punched lettering on the sgraffito and scored guideline (above); i) the same letter with inverted color

(Credit: M. Aiestaran, J. Velaza, et al/Antiquity/Cambridge University).

More Inscriptions Translated Mystery May Never be Solved

In their detailed study, the researchers outline several other inscriptions they may have been able to interpret, including one that may be the name of a place (oTiŕtan) and one that may be a verb (eŕaukon). However, they write, “The rest of the inscription on the Irulegi hand remains obscure.”

Moving forward, the researchers concede that they may never be able to decipher the mysterious symbols on the Hand of Irulegi completely, and its entire purpose and meaning may never be fully understood. However, they do note that the hand is still a significant find since it shows that the people of this area were literate after all.

“The new inscription presented here provides support for a growing awareness that the ancient Vascones knew and made use of writing, at least to a degree,” they explain.

The researchers also point out that most of the other pre-Roman languages from the area “became extinct under the pressure of Latin.” So discovering definitive examples of a pre-Roman, Vasconian language is also incredibly valuable.

“In this context, the recent discovery at the Late Iron Age site of Irulegi of a Vasconic text inscribed on a bronze hand is an important find,” they conclude.

• Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.

{ https://thedebrief.org/category/science/ }

06-11-2024 om 00:48 geschreven door peter  

MUFON OCTOBER 2024  UFO Sightings Report

COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD UNITED STATES 391 CANADA 27 UNITED KINGDOM 23 AUSTRALIA 8 FRANCE 7 SPAIN 5 GERMANY 3 SWEDEN 2 IRELAND 2 MEXICO 2 ISRAEL 2 AUSTRIA 2 COSTA RICA 1 TURKEY 1 GREECE 1 THAILAND 1 SINGAPORE 1 PHILIPPINES 1 NORWAY 1 POLAND 1 ANGUILLA 1 ARGENTINA 1 NETHERLANDS 1 CROATIA 1 PUERTO RICO 1 PANAMA 1 HUNGARY 1   TOTAL: 489 SHAPE Circle 77 Sphere 66 Other 48 Unknown 36 Triangle 34 Disc 31 Square/Rectangular 26 Star-like 24 Oval 23 N/A 14 Cylinder 14 Tic Tac 14 Cigar 11 Fireball 9 Diamond 8 Boomerang 5 Egg 4 Flash 4 Saturn-like 3 Chevron 3 Cone 2 Teardrop 2 Bullet/Missile 1 Blimp 1 Cross 1 STATES OF THE USA California 35 New York 34 Pennsylvania 23 Florida 20 Texas 18 Washington 17 Michigan 16 Arizona 14 Minnesota 14 Indiana 13 Ohio 12 Illinois 11 Colorado 11 Kentucky 10 Missouri 10 North Carolina 8 Tennessee 8 Nevada 8 Georgia 7 Maryland 7 Oregon 7 New Jersey 7 South Carolina 7 Oklahoma 6 Massachusetts 6 Connecticut6 Montana 5 Alabama 4 Maine 4 Arkansas 4 New Hampshire 4 Virginia 4 Wisconsin 4 New Mexico 3 Kansas 3 Wyoming 2 Louisiana 2 North Dakota 2 Hawaii 2 Idaho 2 Vermont 2 Alaska 1 Nebraska 1 Utah 1 Iowa 1 West Virginia 1 Delaware 1 Mississippi 1 South Dakota 1 DISTANCE < 100 ft 55 101-500 ft 46 501 ft - 1 Mile 81 Over 1 Mile 109 Unknown102 NO VALUE 29 ERT Most impressively there were 4 Landings, Hovering, or Takeoffs reported, and 4 Entities observed.

{ https://mufon.com/ }

05-11-2024 om 23:39 geschreven door peter  

Mystery as four NASA astronauts are rushed to hospital without explanation after returning from space

• READ MORE:  Elon Musk reveals why he REALLY wants Trump to win 

By Ellyn Lapointe For Dailymail.Com

A crew of four NASA astronauts was recently hospitalized without explanation after returning to Earth on SpaceX's Dragon capsule. 

After spending more than 200 days on the International Space Station (ISS), the Crew-8 astronauts splashed down off the coast of Florida in the early morning hours of October 25.

NASA revealed that one astronaut received medical care following the return, but on Monday it was found that all members had been taken to the hospital.

One crewmember was kept overnight, but was said to be 'in stable condition under observation as a precautionary measure.'

NASA has not released any details about why the crew was hospitalized, which astronaut had to complete an overnight stay, or whether the medical issues were related to their return to Earth. 

Following the mysterious incident, a NASA safety panel told SpaceX to focus on crew safety as they prepare for future crewed missions to the ISS.

During a meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel on October 31, former astronaut and committee member Kent Rominger listed a series of 'recent issues' with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft. 

He said the mishaps serve as a reminder to remain vigilant as the company increases the pace of its missions. 

'Both NASA and SpaceX need to maintain focus on safe Crew Dragon operations and not take any 'normal' operations for granted,' he said.

All four of the Crew-8 astronauts were hospitalized following their return to Earth, but NASA has not released any details about the reason, or reasons, why

The Crew-8 mission launched toward the ISS on March 3, and the crew was initially expected to return to Earth in August. 

But a series of delays pushed the return flight to early October, extending what was supposed to be a 180-day stay on the ISS into a 235-day stay. 

A typical long-term stay on the ISS lasts six months, or roughly 182 days.  

Living on the ISS does take a toll on astronauts' health, and the longer they stay, the more servere these health issues can become. 

Following long-term space missions, astronauts are known to suffer from bone and muscle loss, vision problems, kidney stones, cardiovascular issues and other health conditions. 

NASA has not released any information about why the Crew-8 astronauts were hospitalized, so it is not clear whether their extended stay on the ISS was the cause. 

It's also possible (but not confirmed) that something went awry during Crew Dragon's return to Earth. 

The incidents that Rominger referenced include observations of the Crew Dragon parachutes during the Crew-8 splashdown, such as 'lagging' behavior that caused one of the four main chutes to open slower than the others, SpaceNews reported.   

He also cited several issues with SpaceX's Falcon 9, such as the July launch failure that grounded the rocket for about two weeks. 

In August, Falcon 9 launches were briefly halted after one of the rocket's boosters was lost during a drone ship landing. 

The Crew-8 astronauts splashed down on the SpaceX Dragon Endeavor on October 25, following a 235-day mission 

And in September, another mishap with the Falcon 9's upper-stage engine occurred during a deorbit burn following the launch of the Crew-9 mission.

As a result, the second stage landed outside the target zone, and the rocket was grounded for another two weeks, except for one mission.

Even as recently as Sunday, SpaceX scrubbed a Starlink satellite launch scheduled for this weekend due to a helium leak.

'When you look at these recent incidents over the last handful of weeks, it does lead one say that it's apparent that operating safely requires significant attention to detail as hardware ages and the pace of operations increases,' Rominger said.

He added that both NASA and SpaceX will have to 'guard against letting the high pace of operations from clouding their judgement' to ensure that missions are conducted with the appropriate level of attention, time and resources. 

Elon Musk's SpaceX has been a trusted NASA partner for years, and the company has been particularly busy this year. 

The commercial spaceflight leader has already launched over 100 rockets in 2024, including several crewed missions. Musk has set an ambitious goal to achieve a total of 148 before the year is over.

This would beat the 98 launches SpaceX achieved in 2023. 

But the company's focus on maintaining a fast-paced mission schedule, and thus its leading position in the commercial space industry, could come at the cost of astronaut health and safety. 

VIDEOS

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

05-11-2024 om 23:30 geschreven door peter  

By Jeff Wise

An image from from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) showing thousands of galaxies. Photo: Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA, ESA, CSA, R. Maiolino (Uni

Exciting rumors have been swirling in the halls of astrobiology. The James Webb Space Telescope, which has been scrutinizing the cosmos in unprecedented detail since its deployment in 2022, has been on a tear lately, and folks in the know say it might finally have detected life beyond Earth. That’s the buzz, anyway. Says astrophysicist Rebecca Smethurst, as reported by The Spectator, “I think we are going to get a paper that has strong evidence for a biosignature on an exoplanet very, very soon.”

In other words: Awesome! But also: Calm down. “Strong evidence for a biosignature” is a long way from proof of life on other planets. A biosignature is basically a signal that’s consistent with life but that may also be produced by something else. It’s intriguing but not incontrovertible evidence. And given the many uncertainties surrounding a discipline still in its infancy, the public should not get its hopes up. “So many people want this to be the year. There will definitely be claims,” says Sara Seager, an MIT professor of astrophysics. “There won’t be any robust findings.”

One reason it’s hard to pin down unequivocal evidence of life is that we don’t really know what life is. Here on Earth, biology involves DNA and carbohydrates and requires liquid water, but the chemistry could be different on other worlds. Maybe life could use liquid methane instead of water, or silicon instead of carbon. So, in its most fundamental formulation, what is life all about, and how do we know what to look for?

One idea is that life must always exist far from chemical equilibrium. Earth’s atmosphere, for instance, contains both oxygen and methane. Left on their own, these molecules would react to form carbon dioxide and water, and in time the oxygen and methane would vanish. “The only reason they are present and coexist is that they keep being replenished by some process,” says NASA astrobiologist Marc Neveu. “In our case, it turns out to be life.”

So if you were looking at Earth from far away, the presence of methane and oxygen together would be a clue that life is operating here. But it wouldn’t be proof because these gases can be generated by non-biological causes.

Just because you can’t prove your evidence is incontrovertible, however, doesn’t mean your conclusion is wrong. By that measure, we might already have found alien life. That is to say, multiple pieces of evidence exist that we may someday recognize as the first glimmer of fact that we are not alone.

2004: Life on Mars

In December 2004, scientists reported that a spectrometer aboard the European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter had measured a tiny but detectable quantity of methane gas in the Red Planet’s atmosphere. That same year, astronomers using ground-based telescopes reported that they too had found signs of methane. On Earth, the gas is produced mostly by living things (including, famously, cow farts) but can also be produced as a result of seismic activity. “It’s widely thought that there are underground streams of liquid water,” says Neveu. “It’s certainly possible that there are microbes in this environment.”

2023: Life on Europa

Jupiter and Saturn, the largest planets, are too cold and too far from the Sun to harbor life as we currently know it. But several of their icy moons are believed to harbor oceans below their frozen surface. Kept warm by tidal forces, these oceans may be able to support life. Particularly interesting is Jupiter’s moon Europa. Last year, the Webb telescope detected carbon dioxide within a geologically young area of the surface, suggesting it might have come from an ocean.

2023: Life Beyond the Solar System

Astronomers have long assumed that stars outside our solar system have planets around them, but not until 1992 were the first ones discovered orbiting neutron stars. Now we know of more than 5,000, but we’ve had no evidence of whether any harbor life. Then, last fall, a team of U.S. and U.K. astronomers released a preprint saying they had detected methane, carbon dioxide, and maybe dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, around a star called K2-18b, which lies 124 light-years away. On Earth, DMS is produced by living organisms.

It’s an extremely tenuous finding, however. Exoplanets are so far away and so dim compared with the star they orbit that even the mighty Webb can’t image them directly. Instead, it waits for the planet to pass in front of the star and then detects a change in the intensity of the light received — in this case, on the infrared part of the spectrum, just beyond the range of human perception. Seagal is skeptical, saying that what the authors took to be a sign of DMS is really just a misinterpretation of the data. “There’s no signal,” she maintains.

A view of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, assembled from images captured by the Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. 

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

Identifying biosignatures is nice, but it would be far more exciting to establish once and for all that extraterrestrial life definitely exists. One way to do that would be to detect a so-called technosignature, a gas that can be produced only artificially through the application of a sufficiently advanced technology. Nitrogen trifluoride, for instance, which is used on Earth in manufacturing, is not known to result from any known natural process. “It would be a more robust finding,” says Seager.

Failing that, the only way to prove the existence of a living thing is to go out and find it and study it up close — watch it metabolize, grow, and reproduce. That’s a tall order. Life on Venus, if it exists, is probably wafting around in the cooler reaches of the planet’s acid atmosphere, while Mars’s methane-belching microbes could be buried miles deep underground. The hardest of all to access would be any life sheltering around distant stars, the nearest of which would take at least 70,000 years to reach using current technology.

The oceans under icy moons may be easiest to get into. This October, NASA is planning to launch a probe called the Europa Clipper, which will swing through the clouds of ice grains Europa ejects through its geysers and see if it can detect the kinds of molecules we might expect if life exists in its subsurface oceans. If the signs are encouraging, they will likely light a fire to send a spacecraft to take a closer look. Last year, researchers in Germany announced they were working on a probe that could melt its way through the crust of an icy moon and explore the ocean below.

Seager is optimistic that the search for extraterrestrial life will ultimately be successful — just not perhaps with the kind of speed people would like to see. She cites the example of the discovery of exoplanets, which seemed exotic and somewhat dubious when the first hints of them were uncovered three decades ago. By analogy, the signs of alien life that first appear will start out being doubtful and rare before becoming ironclad and common.

Neveu agrees that it will take patience. “I think it’s going to be a gradual process,” he says. “Maybe it’s already started.”

{ https://nymag.com/intelligencer }

05-11-2024 om 18:09 geschreven door peter  

Space Force's mysterious X-37B begins 'aerobraking' to lower orbit. Here's how it works (video)

'The U.S. military's highly secretive X-37B space plane just got a little less mysterious.

In a rare show of openness about the space plane's operations, Boeing and the U.S. Space Force released a statement last month explaining that the X-37B would soon begin a series of "aerobraking" maneuvers to begin lowering its orbit and safely disposing of unnecessary hardware before it comes down for a landing on Earth.

This week, Boeing Space released a video detailing how the aerobraking procedure will work and why the X-37B is performing it. In the video, a Boeing representative said the maneuver will help Boeing change the X-37B's altitude and "safely dispose of the service module components in accordance with recognized standards for space debris mitigation."

Typically, when satellites change orbit, they execute one or more burns using their onboard thrusters. This requires propellant, however, meaning each satellite can only perform a limited amount of burns before needing to be refueled or brought out of orbit. Aerobraking, on the other hand, uses the friction of Earth's atmosphere to help guide a spacecraft to a new orbit.

"When we aerobrake, we utilize atmospheric drag to effectively step down our apogee one pass at a time until we get to the orbital regime that we want to be in," said John Ealy, a Boeing engineer, in the company's video explaining the X-37B's aerobraking. "When we do this, we save enormous amounts of propellant, and that's really why aerobraking is important."

Boeing's video about the aerobraking maneuver shows the aircraft-like X-37B changing its attitude, or the direction in which it faces relative to its orbital direction, so that its flat "belly" points forward as it orients its nose up, facing away from Earth below it.

In the animation, the broader, flatter underside of the space plane glows orange from the heat generated as it encounters the drag (a type of friction) produced by Earth's atmosphere, which slows it down.

U.S. Space Force leadership praised the X-37B team for attempting such a novel maneuver. "This first of a kind maneuver from the X-37B is an incredibly important milestone for the United States Space Force as we seek to expand our aptitude and ability to perform in this challenging domain," U.S. Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said in a statement last month. "The success is a testament to the dedication and perseverance of the team."

The X-37B's most recent mission, known as OTV-7 (for "Orbital Test Vehicle-7"), saw the space plane launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time, which put the space plane on a highly elliptical (or oval-shaped) orbit at an unknown altitude.

Like all other X-37B flights, little is known about the OTV-7 other than that the flight is testing the effects of space radiation and "space domain awareness" technologies, presumably meaning new tech to help the U.S. Space Force keep an eye on orbital traffic and what other spacecraft are doing in Earth orbit.

"X-37B missions have continuously advanced our nation's space capabilities by testing new technologies that reduce risk and inform our future space architectures. Mission seven is no different," Holly Murphy, program director for Boeing's Experimental Systems Group, said in the video.

VIDEOS

{ https://www.space.com/ }

05-11-2024 om 17:52 geschreven door peter  

NASA's Parker Solar Probe makes 1st-of-its-kind observation within a coronal mass ejection

Related: 

• NASA's Parker Solar Probe smashes record for fastest human-made object

Solar physicists have inferred that KHI exist in CMEs, as plasma in a CME moves at odds with the background solar wind. But they have never had the proper equipment, in the proper place, to observe the phenomena.

"The turbulence that gives rise to KHI plays a fundamental role in regulating the dynamics of CMEs flowing through the ambient solar wind," said Evangelos Paouris, a solar physicist at George Mason University, in a statement. "Hence, understanding turbulence is key in achieving a deeper understanding of CME evolution and kinematics."

Parker Solar Probe’s 21st orbit included a perihelion that brought the spacecraft within 4.51 million miles of the Sun. 

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

The Parker Solar Probe launched on Aug. 12, 2018. Since then, the probe's elliptical orbit has allowed it to enter the sun's corona closer than ever before — in essence, becoming the first human-made object to enter the sun's outer atmosphere, just 11.5 solar radii from the sun's surface.

Parker Solar Probe’s 18th orbit included a perihelion that brought the spacecraft within 4.51 million miles of the Sun.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

Related Stories:

• Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter team up to tackle 65-year-old sun mystery
• NASA's Parker Solar Probe flies through major coronal mass ejection — and survives to tell the tale
• NASA's daring Parker Solar Probe spacecraft zips past the sun again

And, even now, Parker Solar Probe has not entered its final orbit. The probe has repeatedly flown past Venus in order to use the planet's gravity to boost its speed and tighten its orbit around the sun. In November of this year, the probe will fly past Venus a seventh time, tightening its loop about the sun yet again — allowing it to pass within just 9.5 solar radii from the sun in 2025 and beyond.

{ https://www.space.com/ }

05-11-2024 om 16:14 geschreven door peter  

While observing the Orion Nebula with his 12-inch Dobsonian telescope, a sky-watcher noticed an unusual flashing object. As stars appeared to drift due to Earth's rotation, this particular object while flashing approximately every 20 seconds clearly travels through deep space. 

The observer wonders whether it might be a rotating satellite or not. However, this isn’t the first sighting of cigar-shaped UFOs or other mysterious objects traveling through space near the Orion Nebula, so it is quite possible that it could be an interstellar craft. 

Over the years, I have shared several articles, complete with images and videos, documenting similar UFO sightings around the Orion Nebula. You can explore these under the tag: Orion Nebula. 

Interestingly, these sightings have all occurred between November and February, suggesting there may be a seasonal pattern to these observations.

  

{ https://ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/ }

05-11-2024 om 12:52 geschreven door peter  

This was likely caused by Mars’ interior cooling faster due to its lower mass and lower pressure. Scientists theorize that this caused Mars’ outer core to solidify while its inner core became liquid—though this remains an open question. By comparing the subsurface temperatures obtained by InSight to surface temperatures, the DLR team could measure the rate of heat transport in the crust (thermal diffusivity) and thermal conductivity. From this, the density of the Martian soil could be estimated for the first time.

The team determined that the density of the uppermost 30 cm (~12 inches) of soil is comparable to basaltic sand – something that was not anticipated based on orbiter data. This material is common on Earth and is created by weathering volcanic rock rich in iron and magnesium. Beneath this layer, the soil density is comparable to consolidated sand and coarser basalt fragments. Tilman Spohn, the principal investigator of the HP³ experiment at the DLR Institute of Planetary Research, explained in a DLR press release:

“To get an idea of the mechanical properties of the soil, I like to compare it to floral foam, widely used in floristry for flower arrangements. It is a lightweight, highly porous material in which holes are created when plant stems are pressed into it... Over the course of seven Martian days, we measured thermal conductivity and temperature fluctuations at short intervals.

“Additionally, we continuously measured the highest and lowest daily temperatures over the second Martian year. The average temperature over the depth of the 40-centimetre-long thermal probe was minus 56 degrees Celsius (217.5 Kelvin). These records, documenting the temperature curve over daily cycles and seasonal variations, were the first of their kind on Mars.”

Because the encrusted Martian soil (aka. “duricrust”) extends to a depth of 20 cm (~8 inches), the Mole managed to penetrate just a little more than 40 cm (~16 inches) – well short of its 5 m (~16.5 ft) objective. Nevertheless, the data obtained at this depth has provided valuable insight into heat transport on Mars. Accordingly, the team found that ground temperatures fluctuated by only 5 to 7 °C (9 to 12.5 °F) during a Martian day, a tiny fraction of the fluctuations observed on the surface—110 to 130 °C (230 to 266 °F).

Seasonally, they noted temperature fluctuation of 13 °C (~23.5 °F) while remaining below the freezing point of water on Mars in the layers near the surface. This demonstrates that the Martian soil is an excellent insulator, significantly reducing the large temperature differences at shallow depths. This influences various physical properties in Martian soil, including elasticity, thermal conductivity, heat capacity, the movement of material within, and the speed at which seismic waves can pass through them.

“Temperature also has a strong influence on chemical reactions occurring in the soil, on the exchange with gas molecules in the atmosphere, and therefore also on potential biological processes regarding possible microbial life on Mars,” said Spohn. “These insights into the properties and strength of the Martian soil are also of particular interest for future human exploration of Mars.”

What was particularly interesting, though, is how the temperature fluctuations enable the formation of salty brines for ten hours a day (when there is sufficient moisture in the atmosphere) in winter and spring. Therefore, the solidification of this brine is the most likely explanation for the duricrust layer beneath the surface. This information could prove very useful as future missions explore Mars and attempt to probe beneath the surface to learn more about the Red Planet’s history.

Further Reading: 

• DLR

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

05-11-2024 om 12:44 geschreven door peter  

Terrifying UFO Encounters: Lost Hours and Blinding Lights Haunt Witnesses

Each year, about a million UFO sightings are reported worldwide. While most can be explained, a small percentage remain a mystery. Such was the case for two different groups—three Brazilian men who lost hours after encountering eerie lights, and a young boy in Quebec, Canada, who was temporarily blinded by a strange object with a powerful searchlight. Here’s a closer look at these spine-chilling experiences.

The Brazilian Fishermen’s Strange Encounter with Lost Time

In a remote part of southeastern Brazil, three friends, two of whom were off-duty police officers, set out on a covert fishing trip. Trespassing on private property, they intended to retrieve fish from nets they’d placed the night before. But the calm night was soon interrupted by an inexplicable light.

At first, the men assumed the glow was from a flashlight, perhaps carried by a security guard. However, as the light drew closer, it defied their expectations. Hovering above the treetops, this intense ball of light moved in a way no human could control. They immediately felt a chilling sense of danger. Local folklore had warned them about “The Mother of Gold,” a terrifying legend of glowing orbs that drain the blood and vitality of their victims.

Their initial response was to hide, but soon, more orbs appeared. Driven by fear, they jumped into the lake, seeking refuge underwater. But the glowing lights grew bolder, moving closer to where they were submerged. The men believed these objects were not of this world and felt their lives were truly at risk.

When the lights finally disappeared, the men tried to start their boat to return to safety. However, the engine wouldn’t start, and they discovered they had no fuel left. Exhausted and terrified, they made their way to town on foot. However, when they arrived, they found themselves in disbelief: what felt like mere minutes of horror had somehow spanned four hours. The men couldn’t explain this missing time, a detail that would haunt them.

In the following days, all three men experienced unsettling physical symptoms. One of them developed severe fevers, breathing difficulties, and even began to lose hair and show discoloration on his skin. Yet, medical checks found no explanation. Theories about their experience circulated, with some locals attributing it to low-flying aircraft, though a nearby pilot confirmed seeing similar lights on numerous occasions.

Blinding Light Strikes a Young Boy in Quebec

Hundreds of miles away in a small town in Quebec, 13-year-old Ivan Gendong had a startling encounter of his own. Left in charge of his younger sisters one evening, he noticed a strange noise outside—a loud buzzing, almost like an electrical surge. As he investigated, Ivan saw an intense light shining from the bathroom window. Peering out, he discovered the light’s source: a strange object hovering about 15 feet above the ground, partially obscured by the trees.

Initially, Ivan thought he was seeing things, but then a blinding light beamed directly into his face, leaving him temporarily sightless and overwhelmed by a piercing headache. Disoriented and terrified, he regained his vision only after several minutes. The object still loomed nearby but appeared surrounded by a strange, transparent dome of light, unlike anything he’d seen before.

The next day, Ivan’s parents returned home to find him visibly shaken. He experienced eye pain and even ringing in his ears for several days after the incident. Investigators later discovered damage to trees near where the object had hovered, adding credence to Ivan’s story. More locals reported similar sightings over the following months, describing mysterious bright lights in the area, lending further mystery to Ivan’s already strange encounter.

Unresolved Mysteries

Both of these experiences are among the 5% of UFO sightings that remain unexplained. They share elements often seen in reports of extraterrestrial encounters: missing time, physical symptoms, and strange lights with behavior defying conventional explanations. The Brazilian fishermen and the young boy in Quebec were left with lingering questions and physical aftereffects that would take time to heal—if they ever did. Whether or not these were genuine encounters with otherworldly beings, they serve as reminders of how little we know about what might be lurking beyond our understanding.

VIDEOS

{https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

05-11-2024 om 12:28 geschreven door peter  

'Overlooked' clue on Tutankhamun's death mask that could re-define the boy-king's death

• READ MORE:  Treasure trove found inside King Tutankhamun's tomb

By Nikki Main Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

King Tutankhamun's death mask is one of the most iconic Egyptian relics, but researchers claim it may not have been intended for the late pharaoh. 

A team from the University of York in the UK say the holes in the ears of the mask suggest the mask was actually intended for a high status female or child rather, possibly King Tut's stepmother whose body has never been found.

They hypothesize that Tutankhamun's sudden death at 18 may have saw the shape of his face grafted on top of the true owner of the mask.

Professor Joann Fletcher said: 'This mask was not made for an adult male pharaoh when the gold was compared, [they found] the face is made of completely different gold to the rest.' 

The researchers arrived at the new theory after re-examining the historical records of the 1922 excavation, finding mentions of body modifications that did not align with ancient Egyptian tradition. 

One document in particular, caught the attention of Professor Fletcher, which read: 'Honed in on one long-overlooked feature... the decidedly pierced ears [on the death mask.'

While pharaohs wore earrings, the modifications were not carried over to the death mask. Piercings have only been on those made for the masks of queens and children. 

Professor Fletcher made the revelations in a newly released History Hit documentary, saying she was sure the death mask was not specifically designed for King Tut.

King Tutankhamun's death mask has pierced ears and is made of a type of gold that wasn't typically used for rulers

The mask was likely made for someone else and was re-molded to more closely resemble Tut. It was found in his tomb in the Valley of Kings in 1922

The idea, however, was first proposed in 2015 by Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves who claimed the gold face covering was originally made for Queen Nefertiti - the young king's stepmother. 

Nefertiti married Akhenaten, Tutankhamun's father, but her tomb has yet to be discovered.

King Tutankhamun ascended to the Egyptian throne at just nine years of age and ruled from 1332 BC to 1323 BC.

In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the mask in Tut's lavish tomb in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile River.

A death mask was made for both pharaohs and the everyday person to honor the deceased and establish a connection with the spiritual world.

However, a pharaoh's mask was made of gold or silver, while lesser people's were fashioned from wood or clay.

They were created in the likeness of the person's face to help the deceased's soul return to their body so they could be judged by the Egyptian god Anubis.

In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the mask in Tut's lavish tomb in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile River

Tut's mask featured a broad collar made of semiprecious stones and colored beads were inlaid throughout, and Tut was given a false beard made of gold.

Professor Joann Fletcher combed through Carter's burial records of King Tut to see if more discoveries could be made more than a century later.

The ear piercings caught her attention immediately as she is an Egyptologist who has been studying the ancient civilization for decades.

Famed pharaohs like King Tut's great-grandfather, Amenhotep III, and Ramses II were also found buried in death masks, but neither featured ear modifications.

And none of their statues were found with the piercings.

However, placement for the jewelry has been found etched in statues of queens, such as Nefertiti, and the death mask of Sobekneferu.

Professor Fletcher suggested that the clues on the mask meant King Tut's burial was rushed.

The young pharaoh was plagued with health issues due to Akhenaten marrying his sister who gave birth to the boy king.

Black blotches were found on the walls of the tomb, indicating that the paintings were rushed because of the pharaoh's untimely death

King Tutankhamun died at just 19 years old from an infection that researchers believe stemmed from a broken leg

While not proven, King Tut was believed to have a club foot, cleft palate, bone disease and scoliosis. 

Read More

• Scientist crack Pharaoh's curse' that killed more than 20 people who opened King Tutankhamun's tomb 

Some experts have suspected he was murdered, while others believe the health issues took a toll. 

Not only are there clues in the death mask about a rushed burial, archaeologists have documented blotches of paint on the wall that suggested it hadn't dried when the tomb was quickly sealed.

The size of the lavish burial was also much smaller than what was expected for a pharaoh of Tut's stature. 

'This is the tomb that was intended for Tutankhamun, the tomb of Ay,' Prof Fletcher explained.

'To deepen the enigma, dark spots are scattered across the walls of King Tut's tomb marks that scores of experts point to as a sign the paint was still wet when the tomb was sealed, hinting at the hurried nature of its completion.'

VIDEOS

Archaeologists discover incredible 'overlooked feature' on Tutankhamun's death mask

What is the mystery of the Tutankhamun’s Death Mask?

The first ever view inside Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt | BBC Global

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04-11-2024 om 23:32 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious 'donut' structure is discovered hidden inside Earth's core - and it could unlock the secrets of our planet's protective magnetic field

• Researchers discovered a donut-shaped region at the ceiling of the outer core 
• This lighter region helps stir the liquid metal which generates the magnetic field  

By Wiliam Hunter

Scientists have uncovered a vast donut-shaped structure buried thousands of miles beneath our feet.

Researchers from the Australian National University used seismic waves generated by earthquakes to peer into the Earth's mysterious molten core.

By tracing the path of these waves through the planet, the researchers found a region a few hundred kilometres thick where they travelled two per cent slower than normal

This donut-like structure runs parallel to the equator in a ring around the edge of the liquid outer core, and could be responsible for driving our planet's protective magnetic field.

Professor Hrvoje Tkalčić, lead author of the study, says: 'The magnetic field is a fundamental ingredient that we need for life to be sustained on the surface of our planet.'

Scientists have discovered a previously undetected donut-shaped region buried within the Earth which could be responsible for helping generate Earth's magnetic field (stock image)

Researchers found a region hundreds of kilometres thick and thousands of kilometres deep which wraps around the equator in a torus shape (labelled 'low velocity donut')

The Earth is made up of four major layers: the surface crust, the semi-molten mantle, a liquid metal outer core, and a solid metal inner core.

When the movement of tectonic plates in the crust creates earthquakes, these produce vibrations that spread out through all the other layers of the Earth.

Using the worldwide network of seismographic stations, researchers can see how the waves spread and make predictions about the conditions below the surface.

Scientists usually only look at the big, powerful wavefronts which travel around the world in the first hour or so after an earthquake.

However, Professor Tkalčić and his co-author Dr Xiaolong Ma were able to detect this structure by studying the faint traces left behind by waves many hours after the initial tremor.

This method revealed that seismic waves travelling near the poles were moving faster than those near the equator.

The donut was detected by using measurements of seismic waves triggered by earthquakes around the world (pictured top) by analysing this data the researchers found a speed difference between the waves travelling by the poles (bottom left) and those travelling by the equator (bottom right) 

By comparing their results to different models of the Earth's interior, Professor Tkalčić and Dr Ma found that this was best explained by the presence of a vast underground 'torus', or donut-shaped, region.

They predict that this region is only found at low latitudes and runs parallel to the equator near the ceiling of the outer core where the liquid section meets the mantle.

'We don't know the exact thickness of the doughnut, but we inferred that it reaches a few hundred kilometres beneath the core-mantle boundary,' Professor Tkalčić says.

Thanks to this region's critical role, their discovery may also have profound implications for the study of life on Earth and other planets.

Earth's outer core has a radius of around 2,160 miles (3,480km) - making it slightly larger than Mars.

The best explanation for this data was the presence of an area of low-density material (pictured in red) sitting near the surface of the Earth's liquid outer core 

The Earth's inner and outer cores are responsible for generating the planet's magnetic field, without which no life on Earth would be possible 

Mainly made of hot nickel and iron, convection currents coupled with the Earth's rotation force the liquid metal in this layer into long vertical vortices running in a north-south direction, like giant waterspouts.

It is the swirling currents of these liquid metals which act like the dynamo, powering the Earth's magnetic field.

Since this donut region has 'floated' to the top of the liquid outer core, it suggests that it could be rich in lighter elements like silicon, sulphur, oxygen, hydrogen or carbon.

Professor Tkalčić says: 'Our findings are interesting because this low velocity within the liquid core implies that we have a high concentration of light chemical elements in these regions that would cause the seismic waves to slow down.

The researchers believe that the donut -shaped region might be partially responsible for stirring the liquid metal in the outer core into the waterspout-like vortexes which generate the planet's magnetic field 

The Earth's magnetic field (pictured) deflects the charged particles carried by solar wind which can destroy the DNA of living creatures 

'These light elements, alongside temperature differences, help stir liquid in the outer core.'

Without that stirring motion to drive the planet's interior dynamo, the Earth's magnetic field might not have formed.

Without the magnetic field, the planet's surface would be exposed to a constant bombardment of charged particles from the sun which can destroy the DNA of living creatures.

This donut-shaped region, therefore, might be a critical piece of the puzzle which explains why life has developed on Earth and what we might look for in habitable planets elsewhere.

Dr Tkalčić concludes: 'Our results could promote more research about the magnetic field on both Earth and other planets.'

VIDEOS

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

04-11-2024 om 23:14 geschreven door peter  

The Gulf Stream is on the verge of COLLAPSING, leading climate change scientists warn - plunging the UK into a new ice age

• READ MORE: What will happen to the UK if the Gulf Stream collapses in 2025? 

By WILIAM HUNTER

The network of ocean currents which keep the Earth's climate stable could be about to collapse, scientists have warned.

In an open letter, 44 of the world's leading climate scientists say that key Atlantic Ocean currents - including the Gulf Stream - are on the brink of failure.

The scientists caution that the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could lead to 'devastating and irreversible impacts' which will affect 'the entire world for centuries to come'.

The 2004 movie 'The Day After Tomorrow' (pictured) predicted that the world would enter a new ice age after climate change triggers the collapse of the Gulf Stream. This may have been science fiction 20 years ago, but leading scientists have now warned that the film's terrifying plot could be coming true 

As warm water travels northwards from the tropics, it hits the sea ice around Greenland and the Nordic countries, cooling and becoming much saltier.

As the water cools it becomes denser, sinking rapidly towards the bottom of the ocean where it flows back southwards before once again warming and rising to the surface.

This process of 'deep water formation' is the engine for a vast global conveyor belt which pumps heat and water all around the Atlantic Ocean. 

However, studies suggest that AMOC's deep water engine has started to slow and is now showing worrying signs of breaking down altogether.

As global temperatures rise, melting ice pours fresh water back into oceans, diluting the denser salty water and preventing it from sinking.

If this process were to break down entirely, it would have catastrophic knock-on effects including the weakening of the Gulf Stream and the disruption of global weather patterns.

Encouragingly, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states: 'There is medium confidence that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation will not collapse abruptly before 2100.'

However, the authors of the open letter argue that this risk has been massively underestimated.

44 leading climate scientists have written an open letter to Nordic policymakers calling for action on the risk of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) ocean currents collapsing. These currents (pictured) are a vital engine for moving warm water around the planet 

In their letter, the scientists write: 'The passing of this tipping point is a serious possibility already in the next few decades.'

Research from the University of Copenhagen published earlier this year found that a collapse could occur any time from 2025 onwards.

By looking at ocean temperature data over the last 150 years, the researchers argued that such a scenario is '95 per cent certain' by the end of this century if current greenhouse gas emissions persist.

The open letter also argues that the severity of the risk warrants more concern even if there were only 'medium confidence' in a potential collapse.

'The purpose of this letter is to draw attention to the fact that only “medium confidence” in the AMOC not collapsing is not reassuring, and clearly leaves open the possibility of an AMOC collapse during this century,' say the authors.

'Even with a medium likelihood of occurrence, given that the outcome would be catastrophic and impacting the entire world for centuries to come, we believe more needs to be done to minimize this risk.'

Should the AMOC collapse, the effects would be widespread, devastating, and extremely long-lasting.

Scientists believe that the last time AMOC completely collapsed was during the end of the last Ice Age around 12,000 years ago, when temperatures in western Europe plummeted by up to 10°C (18°F).

If AMOC were to collapse, the scientists predict that the Northwestern Atlantic region,  including the UK, could be frozen inside a growing 'cold bubble' which may drop temperatures by as much as 2.4°C (4.32°F)

The collapse would lead to major cooling and 'unprecedented extreme weather', especially in Nordic countries.

This would enlarge and deepen the 'cold blob' of anomalously cold waters which has already developed over the eastern North Atlantic due to the slowdown of heat-carrying currents.

This would be particularly bad news for the UK which is kept warm by currents of warm water carried by AMOC northwards from the Gulf of Mexico.

Previous studies have suggested that this could lead to winter temperatures in Britain becoming 10°C to 15°C (18°F to 27°F) lower on average.

While the expert say more research is needed, they note that this could 'potentially threaten the viability of agriculture in northwestern Europe'.

Around the world, the collapse of the AMOC currents would also have devastating consequences.

The tropical rainfall belt and monsoon regions could shift southwards, precipitating enormous disruptions to agriculture and water supplies in the region.

Such a shift could cause widespread drought and famine, and could lead to massive increases in the number of climate refugees and escalating geopolitical tensions.

Without the AMOC ocean currents (pictured) the Nordic regions would experience rapid cooling and extreme weather while the Atlantic coast of the US would be hit by 'major' sea-level rises

In the US, the scientists say that a collapse of AMOC would create a 'major additional sea-level rise', potentially threatening vulnerable low-lying areas on the Atlantic coast such as New York and Miami.

Additionally, the authors argue that the resulting changes to weather patterns would cause an 'upheaval of marine ecosystems and fisheries'.

In the face of these threats, the authors of the open letter are calling on the leaders of Nordic countries to seriously consider the risk of an AMOC collapse and put pressure on their global partners to stick to the aims of the Paris Agreement.

However, not every scientist is in agreement that AMOC will collapse within this century.

Since AMOC was first measured in 2004, scientists have expressed concerns that the current system could be weakening.

Yet a number of leading experts argue that these conclusions are far from being definitively established.

The main issue is that researchers have had to make some basic assumptions about how AMOC works in order to predict how it might change over time. 

This climate system is massively complex and some have expressed concern that we don't have all the evidence needed to make precise predictions.

A collapse of the AMOC would cause a shift in the tropical rainfall belt - an area of rainfall that is positioned around the tropics. This could lead to widespread drought and famine as agriculture and water distribution are disrupted 

Read More

• The Gulf Stream could COLLAPSE as early as 2025 - plunging Europe into a deep freeze, scientists warn 

When the original AMOC 'tipping point' paper was published in 2023, these concerns led a number of leading scientists to express scepticism that a total collapse was really coming.

Dr Ben Booth, senior climate scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, said at the time: 'Whilst there is definitely a role for papers like this, the conclusions are far from settled science.'

Dr Booth added: 'A lot of caution needs to be taken in interpreting the findings as a definitive inference of the future overturning change.'

The Gulf Stream Explained

Likewise, Dr John Robson, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the University of Reading, said: 'There are large uncertainties involved in predicting if and when an abrupt weakening of AMOC could occur.'

However, Dr Robson still maintained that the 'warning lights are flashing on' for the AMOC system and that further research and monitoring are crucial.  

What will happen if the AMOC global ocean current collapses?

UK 

Studies suggest that the collapse of AMOC would lead to plummeting temperatures in the UK.

Britain is currently kept toasty by the Gulf Stream which carries warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to the seas around the UK.

If this were to fail, Britain could be plunged into extreme cold with winter temperatures falling by up to 15°C (27°F).

Average summer temperatures would be 3°C to 5°C (5.4°F to 9°F) lower than they are now, while winters could be 10°C to 15°C (18°F to 27°F) colder.

The brunt of this change would be felt by northern areas such as Scotland which will become much colder than the South.

Europe

The effects of an AMOC collapse would be particularly strong in Northwestern Europe and the Nordic regions.

Scientists warn that the 'cold blob', an anomalous region of cold, could expand and deepen over the region.

The area would be gripped by freezing temperatures so cold that sea ice could creep South from the Arctic.

Extreme weather will become more common, with violent storms and intense rainfall becoming more frequent.

The effects could be so strong that scientists warn it could threaten the viability of agriculture in Northern Europe.

US 

The US will avoid most of the freezing consequences of AMOC collapse but will not escape unscathed.

Scientists predict that the failure of the ocean currents would lead to major additional sea-level rises on the Atlantic coastline.

Research has suggested major cities such as New York, New Orleans, and Miami could be threatened by flooding.

Estimates already suggest that up to 448,000 people could be displaced.

Additionally, changing weather patterns could lead to 'upheaval' for coastal ecosystems and fisheries.

Worldwide

If AMOC collapses the tropical rainfall belt, an area of high rainfall positioned around the tropics will shift southwards.

This shift could lead to widespread enormous disruptions to agriculture and water supplies in the region.

That change could trigger widespread famine and drought in some regions with devastating floods in others.

In turn, experts suggest that this will lead to a massive increase in the number of climate refugees fleeing their home countries and escalating geopolitical tensions in the region.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

04-11-2024 om 22:51 geschreven door peter  

In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 to explore the outer planets and far beyond. Since then, Voyager 1 has traveled over 14 billion miles, capturing extraordinary images of our solar system. This slideshow highlights 13 of the most breathtaking images Voyager 1 sent back to Earth, along with some from its sister spacecraft, Voyager 2, on their incredible journeys toward interstellar space.

1. Earth and the Moon – A Distant View

Taken on September 18, 1977, Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to capture both Earth and its Moon in a single frame. At a distance of 7.25 million miles from Earth, this iconic image shows the Moon floating beyond our home planet, emphasizing the vastness of space.¹

• Read More: The Mystery of The Indian Ocean’s ‘Gravity Hole’

2. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

In early 1979, Voyager 1 provided a close-up of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm larger than Earth. This swirling mass of clouds, first observed centuries ago, gave scientists new insight into Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere, thanks to the detailed images captured by Voyager.

3. Active Volcanism on Io

During its flyby of Jupiter’s moon Io, Voyager 1 discovered something unprecedented—active volcanoes. This was the first observation of volcanic activity on another celestial body besides Earth. Voyager detected plumes erupting miles into space, revealing Io’s fiery surface.

4. Saturn’s Breathtaking Rings

Voyager 1 reached Saturn in 1980, capturing stunning images of its intricate ring system. Saturn’s rings, composed of countless ice and rock particles, revealed a beauty never before seen. Voyager even discovered a new, faint G-ring and enigmatic spokes in the B-ring.²

5. Titan’s Hazy Atmosphere

As Voyager 1 flew past Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, it detected a thick atmosphere primarily composed of nitrogen. Titan’s opaque haze left its surface hidden, fueling speculation about the moon’s geological secrets. This image offered a glimpse into one of the most mysterious moons in our solar system.

6. The Pale Blue Dot

Perhaps the most famous image Voyager 1 ever captured is the “Pale Blue Dot,” taken on February 14, 1990, from 3.7 billion miles away. In this image, Earth appears as a tiny speck, less than a pixel in size, suspended in a sunbeam. Carl Sagan’s reflections on this image remind us of our small place in the vast universe.

• Read More: NASA Discovered a Potentially Habitable Planet – An Alternative To Mars?

7. Close-up of Europa

Voyager 1 also flew by Jupiter’s moon Europa, capturing images of its icy surface. The close-up showed evidence of potential subsurface oceans, raising the possibility of life beneath its frozen crust. These images set the stage for future missions to study Europa more closely.

8. Voyager 1’s Family Portrait of the Solar System

In 1990, Voyager 1 captured a family portrait of the solar system from beyond Pluto. This composite image includes six planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Earth, and Venus. It’s a striking reminder of our solar system’s expanse and the spacecraft’s journey far from home.

9. Saturn’s Moons – Tethys, Dione, and Rhea

Voyager 1 captured images of Saturn’s moons Tethys, Dione, and Rhea in 1980, showcasing their cratered surfaces and icy landscapes. These moons, though small, are integral parts of Saturn’s complex system of rings and satellites.

10. The F Ring of Saturn

One of the discoveries made by Voyager 1 was the narrow, braided F ring of Saturn. This stunning image shows the intricacies of the ring’s structure, including its twists and clumps, revealing a dynamic system shaped by gravitational interactions with Saturn’s moons.

11. Entering Interstellar Space

In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, crossing the heliopause—the boundary between the solar wind and interstellar medium. The spacecraft’s data showed a steep drop in solar particles and a rise in cosmic rays, confirming this historic milestone.

12. A Golden Message to the Cosmos

Voyager 1 carries the Golden Record, a 12-inch disc containing sounds and images from Earth. This record, curated by Carl Sagan and his team, serves as a message to any intelligent life that might find it, showcasing humanity’s diversity and curiosity.

13. Beyond the Solar System

Voyager 1’s journey continues today, traveling at 38,000 miles per hour into interstellar space. Though its power is diminishing, the data it sends back from beyond the solar system gives us unprecedented insight into the universe beyond the Sun’s influence.

Conclusion

Voyager 1’s images, from the close-up of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot to the distant Pale Blue Dot, have changed our understanding of the cosmos. As it continues its journey through interstellar space, this remarkable spacecraft reminds us of humanity’s quest for discovery beyond the stars.

• Read More: If a ‘Planet Killer’ Astroid is Going to Hit Earth, This is How NASA Will Warn The World

Sources

1. “Astonishing Images: What Voyager 1 Really Saw in its 47-Year-Journey to Interstellar Space..” Secrets of Universe. Rishabh Nakra.
2. “Voyager: 15 incredible images of our solar system captured by the twin probes (gallery).” Space. Daisy Dobrijevic and Mike Wall. September 22, 2022.

VIDEOS

What Did Voyager 1 See During its Journey Out Of The Solar System? 1977-2019 (4k UHD)

Voyager Images from the Odysseys (NASA Space Photos)

{ https://theheartysoul.com/category/planet/ }

04-11-2024 om 18:44 geschreven door peter  

From the Countryside to the Terraced Estates: Lesser-Known UFO and Alien Encounters of the United Kingdom

Marcus Lowth

Just about every country on the planet has UFO encounters on record. The United Kingdom, perhaps particularly due to its size, has more than its fair share. While some of these, such as the Rendlesham Forest incident, are well-known inside and outside of the UFO community, many others are far lesser known.

Perhaps the best place to start is with one of the most mind-blowing encounters on record, which unfolded in the winter of 1987 on the Ilkley Moor near Ilkley in the Yorkshire countryside. The case was detailed in the book Without Consent by Philip Mantle and Carl Nagaitis, and while the witness was happy to share his account with investigators, he did so under the condition that he remained anonymous, which only adds a further hint of credibility to it. The witness was given the name Philip Spencer, and all that is known about him is that he is a former police officer.

At around 7 am one icy cold December morning, Philip left his home on his way to his father-in-law’s home in East Morton. The two of them shared an interest in photography and were planning on spending the morning on the Yorkshire Moors. It was while he was walking up a steep hill that he began to notice a strange humming sound coming from above him. At first, he assumed it was coming from a low-flying aircraft. However, when he noticed something strange moving to the side of him in his peripheral vision, he began to question just what the noise might be. He turned to look at the movement he had noticed and was shocked to see a “small figure” heading up the embankment of the quarry. He immediately stopped and called out to the figure. At the same time, he raised his camera to his eye and snapped a picture of the bizarre being before it turned away and headed off once more.

At this point, Philip began to pursue the figure. The closer he got, he could tell that it was “waving him off”, as if warning him from coming any closer. He eventually reached the top of the embankment. By the time he had done so, however, the figure had seemingly vanished into thin air. Then, he noticed a “huge silver disc-shaped object” hovering directly above him. The next thing he knew, the object shot off into the distance at great speed.

Philip decided to return home, clearly shaken up by the surreal events. However, when he arrived back in Ilkley only minutes later, he realized it was after 10 am. He had somehow lost almost three hours. As soon as this realization hit him, he recalled the photograph he had taken. He made his way to the bus stop, catching a bus to the nearby town of Keighley, where he could have the film developed in an hour. When he received the photographs, he was stunned by what he was looking at. Although a little grainy, he could clearly see the figure he witnessed earlier that morning.

Incidentally, you can view the picture in question by simply searching Google (or whatever your chosen search engine is) with something along the lines of Ilkley Moor Alien Photograph.

In the days that followed, Philip began to experience intense dreams. Combined with the bizarre events themselves, he decided to report his encounter to a UFO organization, although he had no knowledge of UFOs, and so, at least initially, didn’t know who to contact. After researching, he decided to write to investigator and researcher, Jenny Randles. Randles would pass his details (or the PO Box number he used in order to protect his identity) to the Manchester UFO Research Association. Ultimately, however, the group showed little interest in the case. Following this, Philip contacted another UFO researcher – Arthur Tomlinson. And he made immediate plans to meet with him.

Tomlinson and his fellow researcher, Steve Balon, first had Philip take them on the exact route he took on the morning of the sighting. When they were at the sight where the photograph had been taken, Tomlinson noticed how a compass that Philip had with him had reversed its polarity (it now pointed south instead of north). Following this initial meeting, Philip handed the photograph, including the negative, to Tomlinson so that it could analyzed (it has been suggested that the picture is authentic without any signs of tampering).

With all of this in mind, Tomlinson approached the Manchester UFO Research Association chairman, Peter Hough, asking him to come with them on a second visit to Ilkley they had planned. He agreed, and Philip went over the details of the encounter once more. It was noted by Tomlinson that Philip gave virtually the same account with no variations, another sign of the credible nature of the incident.

Once more, Philip took the investigators to the location where he had seen the strange figure and taken the photograph. While they were, investigators noted another fine detail. The sky in the photograph Philip had taken was light. He claimed he had taken the picture at some time between 7:30 am and 7:45 am. However, at this time, the sky would have been a lot darker. When Philip underwent hypnotic regression a short time later, this anomaly would be explained.

Following this second meeting, and before Philip had undergone hypnotic regression, two strange men arrived at Philip’s home claiming to be from the Ministry of Defense, a Mr. Jefferson and a Mr. Davies. They wasted little time in expressing their interest in the photograph Philip had taken on the moors that cold December morning. He told them little of the experience and informed them that he was no longer in possession of the picture. He wasted little time informing Tomlinson of the visit. He didn’t, however, see the two men again.

A short time after this, Philip underwent hypnotic regression. And the details that emerged from the session are remarkable, to say the least, just one of which was that he had taken the picture much later in the morning than he had thought he had.

He recalled that it was a particularly cold morning, and he was walking up the hill on the way to his father-in-law’s house. He recalled seeing the strange figure on the embankment. However, this time, under regression, the figure was not moving away from him but heading towards him. He also recalled for the first time that he couldn’t move, as if he were temporarily paralyzed and frozen to the spot. Furthermore, everything had turned “fuzzy!” Then, things turned even stranger.

He suddenly found himself “floating along in the air” and when he looked down, he could see the strange figure – that he described as having a green tinge to its skin – walking below, slightly ahead of him. Several moments later, he saw the “big silver saucer thing” up ahead. At this point, he appears to have lost consciousness as all he could recall next was that “everything went black”.

His next memory was of being in a “funny sort of room” that was lit up in such a way that he couldn’t see the source of the glow – as if the light was coming out of the walls. He recalled having surges of fear running through him. At the same time, a voice appeared inside his head, urging him not to be afraid. Interestingly, the sense of fear was replaced by a sense of calm. He was placed by unseen entities on some kind of strange table before a tube-like device made its way over his body from his feet to his head. Philip recalled that he believed this was some kind of scanning device. When the device had performed this duty and disappeared, Philip noticed the green figure standing in a doorway a short distance away. And what’s more, it was urging him to join it.

He stated that he didn’t want to follow the figure but found himself heading towards it. He went through the doorway and found himself in a “round room” looking at a “strange ball with things around it”. Then, the voice appeared in his head once more, urging him to continue walking through the room and into a corridor on the other side of it. He did so, following the corridor into another room. Inside, there were two of the green-skinned creatures, as well as a picture on the wall that appeared to move (which was likely some kind of screen). Interestingly, he couldn’t recall what the pictures were, but he could remember the voice asking him, “Do you understand?”, to which he responded that he did. Then, things turned black once more.

His next memory was of standing on the moor looking at the strange figure on the embankment. This time, it was heading away from him as he had initially recalled. He recalled calling out to it, to which it “waived him off”. It was at this point that he took the picture, which he had, it was determined, taken sometime between 8 am and 10 am.

Following the session, it was concluded that Philip Spencer was a very credible witness who recalled the encounter “as something that had actually happened!” The incident also contained many details that can be found in other similar encounters – such things as the no-source lighting, blacking out when entering and exiting the craft, and, of course, the missing time.

There are also other intriguing details. For example, when Philip was asked, under hypnosis, about the visual screens he had seen – which very well could have been some kind of film – he responded that he was “not supposed to tell anybody” about that as it was “not for them to know!” Whether this was his own determination or due to some kind of mental programming, he refused to tell any details. Ultimately, the case remains of interest to researchers and investigators today, almost four decades later.

Another particularly interesting UFO and alien encounter from the United Kingdom was investigated by veteran UFO researcher, Tony Dodd, who relayed the account in his 1999 book Alien Investigator: The Case Files of Britain’s Leading UFO Detective. The incident occurred in a typical English town in Derbyshire in the summer of 1995. On this particular evening, Mike and Debbie had invited their friends and neighbors, Steve and Annie, to their house for a barbecue. It would be an evening that would change all four of their lives.

The barbecue had been a last-minute arrangement, and it was 10 pm before the coals were finally lit. Around 40 minutes later, a mix of chicken legs, sausages, and burgers was cooking on the griddle. The four friends were sitting in the garden, each enjoying a glass of cold cider. Then, things suddenly changed.

Out of nowhere, a huge object appeared over the garden around 20 feet from the ground. This craft was a round disc shape with a black, metallic exterior and bright white lights moving in an anti-clockwise direction. The lights were so bright that they lit up the entire garden. As the group looked on, a door suddenly opened on the object’s side. At the same time, a bizarre feeling swept through the four friends, with each later stating the surroundings took on a strange “dream-like” feel. According to Steve, they felt “as if we had entered a vacuum. All sound seemed to have stopped, and everything went into slow motion!”

The next thing they realized, the craft was moving away from them. While it did so, slowly at first, it soon picked up pace before it disappeared into the distance. Within seconds of the craft moving away, all four of the witnesses began to feel intense stomach pains, as well as feelings of intense nausea. It was at this point that Steve looked over to the barbecue. Not only were the coals now beginning to cool, but all of the food had been completely burnt. When he looked at his watch, he was shocked to see it was almost midnight. They had, it seemed, lost almost an hour and a half.

Despite the bizarre nature of the events, Mike decided to make a report to the police. They promptly attended the property and took statements from each of the witnesses. As part of their standard investigation, they asked if anything was missing. It was soon discovered that two of the cider glasses the group used were nowhere to be seen. Ultimately, the police recommended that they contact Tony Dodd (who was a former police detective). They did so, and a short time later, they were undergoing separate hypnotic regression sessions in order to try and discover what happened in the 80 minutes that were unaccounted for.

To begin with, they would each volunteer the same basic account. They all recalled, for example, seeing the strange glowing object shortly after lighting the barbecue. They claimed it was a considerable distance away, to begin with, but soon came closer. In fact, in no time at all, it was directly over the house. They described the object as being round with some kind of dome on the top, while the lights on the underside were so bright they were almost “blinding”. It was at this stage that each of the accounts became more personal to each witness.

Debbie, for example, offered that after the object appeared overhead, she recalled Annie standing, looking up and pointing at it. She also recalled seeing “rotating lights” of red, green, and white, and that they were so bright they hurt her eyes. As she was describing these events she became very visibly upset – so much so that she had to be calmed down before the session could continue.

When she continued, she stated that she was no longer “on my own! I am not in the garden anymore!” She claimed she could see “shadows” and “different colored lights”, as well as “eyes looking at me, they’re big and black, not like ours!”

The next thing she realized, she was lying on “something hard with my back raised!” She could also sense movement behind her – some kind of figures that she could only describe as shadow-like. She also offered other details, such as noticing how the roof of the room came “down to the walls without a joining!” Once more she became visibly distressed, and at this point, it was decided to bring the session to a close.

When Annie gave her account she showed the same distress, and even fear. She described a column of light coming from the underside of the object and stretching down to the ground. Shortly after, she saw a “small figure” who was dressed in a black cloak with a hood standing in the garden. She further stated that it had a “strange, pale face with a pointed chin and very large black eyes!”

Then, two more of these strange beings appeared. Before she knew it, she was surrounded and they had hold of her arms. They were, she recalled, “dragging me towards the light!” She further claimed that she could hear these beings making “strange, animal-like grunting noises!”

The next thing she knew, she was inside the craft. To begin with she displayed intense anxiety and fear. However, when she spoke of finding herself inside the strange room, she suddenly became calm, leading Dodd to speculate whether this was some kind of calming drug that the aliens had administered. She went on to describe being inside a room with “loads of people around the sides of the room. (They are) little people. They are all wearing cloaks with hoods!”

She went on to describe similar procedures as Debbie had, before offering further details of the room, describing it as “funny, round, and divided into squares”. She also described the light as being a “peachy” color that appeared to come out of the walls and that caused her vision to become blurred.

She then noticed one of the figures had some kind of device in its hand. She described this as being a “silver, small square thing on a rod”. At the same time, she could also see another figure using some kind of medical-type instrument on her toes. These procedures continued, as she recalled something being injected into her neck, as well as something being inserted into her belly button.

Then, without warning, one of the figures pressed its face directly up against hers. She stated under hypnosis that this face was “really pale, with long, black, slanting eyes”. Before she could take in any further details, she could sense something “pressing down on her belly button” causing her severe discomfort.

The next thing she could recall was of standing in the garden and watching the object disappear into the distance.

Mike underwent hypnotic regression but quickly became so visibly terrified that it was decided to bring the session to an immediate stop. Ultimately, it was determined it would be unsafe for his mental health to attempt regression again, although his reaction alone tells us something terrifying and out of the ordinary occurred that summer evening. Annie’s husband, Steve, though, offered further interesting details about the incident.

Interestingly, even before the bizarre object appeared over the garden, Steve offered, while under hypnosis, that there was a “strange” feeling to the night. When the object did appear, the first thing he could recall was his wife’s petrified screams at the side of him. He had a quick memory of the flashing lights before suddenly finding himself inside the object.

He offered he was inside a “bright room, with lots of small people!” Similar to his wife’s description, he stated that these figures wore cloaks with hoods, adding that it appeared these cloaks were made from material that was “like black tin foil but not tin foil!”

The next thing Steve remembered he was standing inside a “transparent tube, without seams”. Standing around the tube were several of the small beings, each staring at him. After several moments, he was removed from the tube and taken to another room. He stated that this room was “very big” and that he could “see all sorts in here”, including “loads of little people, moving around”. He continued that they had “balls of white stuff in their hands” and that he had no idea what it was. Furthermore, he could see a board on one of the walls that had the planets of the solar system on it.

At this point, Steve’s memory became a little hazy and disjointed. He stated that he wasn’t certain if he was standing or not, but he realized that he was temporarily paralyzed. Furthermore, he had vague memories that he was taken to a separate craft at some point during the encounter, before being back in the strange room with the figures performing various experiments on him.

His next memory was of being “back in the tube”. He could hear screaming which he first believed to be his own. Then, he realized it was Annie. He was confused as to where he was before he focused on the craft overhead and realized he was back in the garden beneath it. It was motionless, but the lights were spinning, increasing quickly. As this was happening, he recalled feeling like he was struggling for breath, as well as not being able to take his focus from the object despite the fact he desperately wanted to. Then, the craft began to rise into the air and disappeared into the distance.

Although the four witnesses were glad to have filled in some of the blanks of that summer’s evening in 1995, none of them wished to investigate the case further, and all declined further hypnosis sessions.

Just before 2020, after researching this case, I received an email from a member of Dodd’s investigative team. He insisted that not only was the case a very credible one, but that some of the witnesses went on to develop strange abilities, including telepathy. This is an intriguing detail as there are many people who claim to have developed such bizarre abilities following close encounter incidents.

There is no doubt that the case is one of the most thought-provoking alien abduction encounters on record. And one, should any of the witnesses ever have a change of heart regarding further investigation of the case, that could have further secrets to reveal. Perhaps the fact that all of the witnesses have chosen to remain anonymous with no effort to make money from “telling their story” lends the case even more credibility.

There are also several details from the case that resonate very nicely with others from around the UFO community. We have already mentioned the details of the witnesses seemingly developing strange abilities in the years following the encounter, but even the descriptions of the craft and the rooms inside is interesting. Such details as the walls being “seamless” or “without joints”, for example. We might also recall that the witnesses claimed to have suffered from nausea and intense stomach cramps immediately following the encounter, something else that can be found in many other similar incidents. That something strange happened to the four friends that evening in Derbyshire in the summer of 1995 is surely beyond doubt.

One of Dodd’s most fascinating cases involved a woman known only as “Sharon from Yorkshire”. In the early 1990s, Sharon was listening to an interview with Dodd on the radio. He was speaking about alien abduction cases, specifically, some of the signs that a person might look for as an indicator that they may have also been abducted by aliens. The more Sharon listened, the more she realized that she was experiencing several such signs. And what’s more, these apparent clues had been showing themselves to Sharon for years.

She often awoke, for example, to find her nightdress not only removed but completely disappeared, as if it had simply vanished. Furthermore, she would often wake up to find blood on her pillows from apparent nosebleeds during the night. Even stranger, she would sometimes wake up with mud and dirt on her feet, on the bedroom floor, and even in her bed, as well as even waking up in random rooms in her house with no memory whatsoever of how she got there.

There were also other clues described by Dodd that she had experienced. She would often notice strange smells in the air that she couldn’t explain, as well as finding markings on her body with no memory of how she had received them. There were also many times that electrical equipment would malfunction when she was near them, and strangest of all; clocks would often tick backward if she was in the room.

She would eventually make contact with Dodd, who would detail the hypnosis sessions he conducted with her in his previously mentioned book Alien Investigator. He first took Sharon back to an incident that had happened (then) recently, to around 5 am one morning when she had just gotten out of bed and was getting ready for work. She detailed that, although she didn’t understand why, she had an urge to look out of her bedroom window. To her shock, she could recall seeing three “greeny-brown” craft that she recalled being the “length of a working man’s club!” She further recalled the craft had extremely precise and straight edges and a curved top, with no windows visible on the object’s dark exterior.

The next thing she knew, she was seemingly inside one of these large craft, inside a “large, white room” with ramps leading out of it. She further described tall, tanned beings onboard the craft with her. What’s more, these strange entities spoke to her “into her head”. We should note once more that this detail of telepathic communication is one that can be found in many encounters of alien abduction and close encounters with extraterrestrials.

The next thing she could recall was standing on one of the ramps that led into another white room, only now, there were other people all around her. She stated they were led into the room, which she described as looking like an assembly hall. Moments later, one of the tall, tanned beings appeared in front of them. She recalled that this being began speaking to them, not out loud, but directly into their heads. She said the being spoke about the pollution of the planet and how humanity must change its ways.

At this point, this alien entity told the group to turn and look towards a large window in one of the walls. Sharon recalled being able to see Earth outside. After being left to look at the breathtaking sight for several moments, they were told to move to another room. According to Dodd’s regression tapes, Sharon described what happened next, stating that they were walking “up the ramp, down the long corridor” when she had a sudden urge to touch the walls, claiming she could sense a power coming from them. She described the walls as being “dark and light” with a sand-like texture that appeared like metal but wasn’t.

Then, she was in the next room, one that was dark with a “light at the front” and a bizarre floor below them. At this point, Sharon began to feel a surge of fear running through her, although she couldn’t understand why. She recalled becoming confused – so much so, she wasn’t sure if she was standing up or sitting down. She also recalled a “cold bright light” being shined directly into her face at random intervals. At the same time, she began to feel numb, as well as having a sense that she had somehow been restrained. She noticed that there were now other beings in the room, different from the tall, tanned ones.

She could only see their heads, which she stated were big with big eyes. She then noticed that one of these creatures was reaching out towards her and touching her fingers. She recalled this entity had four fingers that were “not like ours”. She then noticed some kind of round device heading towards her from above, stating that it was “going in my stomach!” She recalled sensing some kind of injection in her abdomen, although she also recalled that she couldn’t feel any pain. Then, before she knew it, the procedure was over.

She now found herself sitting up on some kind of table, although she had no idea how she had arrived there. In front of her was one of the tall, tanned beings who guided her to a strange triangular doorway. After standing in this doorway for several moments, the entity informed her that it was “time to go home!” The next thing she knew, she was back in her bedroom.

Dodd also regressed Sharon back to several other apparent abductions during different stages of her life. One of these was when she was only eight years old. She recalled being asleep in bed when she woke up suddenly. She stated to Dodd, under hypnosis, that “the man is here again” and that she “had to go. I don’t want to go. I’m tired!” This strange man then led Sharon outside where she could see a “spaceship” hovering overhead. The man led her onboard. The next thing she knew, the craft was “going on its side” and she was floating.

She soon found herself in a large room that was full of other children. The large, tall, tanned entities were in the room also. Perhaps bizarrely, she offered to Dodd that these taller entities were “teachers” and that they “had to listen” to them as they “teach you!”

Another intriguing abduction encounter occurred when Sharon was around 14 years old. She told Dodd that she was at her aunt’s house “in the back garden, having a fag!” Then, for reasons she couldn’t explain, she sensed that she was rising from the ground. She recalled that she was “going straight up into the ship”, adding that this ship was “different from the others”. She went on to describe “paneling on the wall” where she could see “funny writing shapes, something like Egyptian writing!” This detail is certainly interesting when we consider what she recalled next.

She found herself standing in her room with all of her clothes removed. The familiar tall beings were standing around her. On this occasion, though, she was the only person there. She suddenly noticed an uncomfortable “pins-and-needles” sensation spreading through her body. As this was happening, one of the entities told her – once more, directly into her head – that this feeling was from the energy they were transferring to her. She recalled that this feeling was spreading all over her body.

Then, she recalled perhaps the most fascinating detail of all. She was told that the pyramids of Earth were of great importance, and most intriguing, that “they (the aliens) put the pyramids here!”

Surprisingly or not, Sharon had no memory of what she had said once she was brought out of these hypnosis sessions. In fact, when she viewed video footage of them, she was completely surprised at what she was saying. She did, though, claim to Dodd that she felt more “at peace” with the bizarre events that had seemingly plagued her life.

Without a doubt, one of the most intriguing alien encounters from the United Kingdom occurred one sunny day in 1940 in Gateshead, England. According to an article in the June 24th, 2011, edition of The Northern Echo newspaper, one day in the spring of 1940, Robert Hall and a friend were playing in the streets of the terraced housing estate where they lived when they suddenly noticed a group of soldiers marching down the street. As Robert watched the soldiers, his eye caught a strange object that was “whizzing” across the sky. He realized he was the only one to see it, so he remained quiet. However, when he and his friend were returning home to get something to eat a short time later, their afternoon took a drastic turn.

As they approached one of the corners of the backstreets – with tall, red-bricked terraced housing overlooking them on each side - Robert noticed how a “shimmy” appeared in the air, very similar to how it appears in very hot conditions. The next thing they realized, they were inside some kind of atmospheric distortion, and of more concern, there in front of them was a strange “egg-shaped thing” that was “surrounded by bright light”. They both looked at each other, both unsure of what to do. A moment later, they noticed around 20 “strange-looking creatures” near the bizarre object.

Robert later described these entities as humanoid, each between two to four feet tall. However, he also offered that these humanoids were decidedly different from each other. One, for example, looked similar to what we would imagine a Bigfoot to look like, while another had long hair, a thin body, and wore what appeared to be a long coat that covered what seemed to be batwings. Some of these figures even looked almost human, with pale skin and long blond hair, a description very similar to the alleged Nordic aliens of the 1950s.

As Robert watched this bizarre scene, he became aware of several other children who had been playing in the alley, and who were also clearly aware of this strange display before them. Robert recalled how they appeared clearly “petrified and in shock”, with some of them trying to “get over the railway” but were unable to do so because of the barbed wire that ran around it. He even heard several of them screaming. Then, one of the creatures turned their attention to Robert and his friend.

These strange beings then spoke in “perfect English”, asking the boys if they could “examine” them. Robert protested, recalling that he said the country was “at war with Germany” and that they shouldn’t go with them. Despite this, the creatures brought both Robert and his friend onboard the egg-shaped object. According to Robert, these apparent aliens then proceeded to take a sample of blood from the back of his neck. Even more harrowing, he was told that he had to remain utterly still during this procedure or he would be “killed instantly”. When taken, a strange jelly-like substance was placed on the spot of the blood of the extraction. Although they carried out several other procedures following this, Robert couldn’t recall what they were. Then, the next thing he knew, the aliens were telling Robert and his friend that they were free to go. Needless to say, they ran as fast as they could all the way back home.

As soon he arrived back at his house, he blurted out to his parents what had happened. However, they both dismissed his claims, offering that someone had likely played a prank on him. This was echoed by several soldiers who were standing on the street near to the house, and who heard Robert’s curious tale. Despite this, several of the soldiers went to investigate the location Robert claimed the incident had unfolded. And when they arrived, they could clearly see the egg-shaped object rising into the air. One of them even fired his pistol in the object’s direction, but didn’t appear to hit it. A moment later, it had disappeared.

Robert recalled years later that he struggled to understand just where all of the humanoid entities had disappeared to, stating that the object was around 12 to 14 feet and, as such, surely could not have fit all of them inside.

Things turned even stranger, and perhaps rather more ominous, the following day when two men in black suits arrived at Robert’s home. Ultimately, they told Robert that he mustn’t speak about what he had seen; otherwise, he would “disappear!” To begin with, Robert put the incident out of his mind. Several days later, however, he would find himself at the center of another bizarre and surreal experience.

Once more, he was playing in the backstreets in between the rows of terraced houses when another strange creature appeared out of nowhere and reached for him. When Robert described this creature – large head, thin body, long arms, and huge, black eyes – it was clear he was describing a grey alien. As it happened, Robert’s uncle was nearby when this bizarre scene unfolded, and he immediately ran over to his nephew. He happened to be carrying a coal shovel at the time and so used this to attack the creature, hitting it on the head. It immediately fell to the ground seemingly dead from the assault. Robert’s uncle then placed the body into a large sack and told Robert to find a policeman and report what had happened.

Robert happened upon Sergeant Brookes, who quickly followed the young boy to the scene in the back alley. Once he had inspected the body for himself, Brookes promptly informed the army. A small military unit arrived a short time later. They inspected the body before removing it, disappearing without explanation.

Robert, incidentally, would go on to face a lifetime of ridicule for his claims, although he never once altered his version of events.

UFO researcher, Richard D. Hall, would investigate the case retrospectively. And he quickly determined that Robert Hall’s claims were very credible. He discovered, for example, that several of the local businesses and shops that Robert claimed had been near the location of the encounter were all accurate and correct. He also discovered that a Sergeant Brookes did indeed work in that location during 1940.

There were also further intriguing details that Hall picked up on after speaking with Robert years later. Robert recalled, for example, that one of the figures held some kind of device that could immediately “subdue or immobilize” a person, a detail that shows up in multiple other UFO and alien encounters. As well as the blood sample (another detail often in alien abduction encounters) Robert recalled that a strange triangular mark remained on his face for several years after the initial encounter. Many people, even before the realization that they have been abducted by aliens, attest to finding similar markings on their bodies. Interestingly, if a little disturbing, Richard Hall suggested that rather than attempting to take a blood sample, these apparent aliens could very well have been “trying to put something in” – essentially, some kind of alien implant.

Eventually, Robert agreed to meet Richard so they speak more of the encounter. However, he quickly changed his mind, stating that he feared further ridicule by continuing to speak of the encounter. Richard then contacted several other UFO researchers who Robert had spoken with in previous years, one of whom was former police officer, Gary Heseltine.

Heseltine informed Richard Hall that Robert had contacted him “out of the blue” at some point in 2003. And to begin with, as Heseltine recalled it, he was convinced that he “had a nutter on the line”. He did, though, listen to Robert’s tale, and as he spoke, Heseltine noticed that he was not only precise and coherent, but that he would respond to each of Heseltine’s questions with “a lot of information”, right down to street and business names.

Heseltine would end up speaking with Robert for close to two hours. And by the end of the conversation, he was convinced that Robert was “showing signs of genuine recall”. In fact, Heseltine believed Robert’s account so much that he agreed to meet with him. Much like his telephone conversation with him, the more questions Heseltine asked, the more details Robert came back with. Furthermore, Heseltine also spoke with Robert’s sister, Rhoda, who would seemingly corroborate her brother’s story. Heseltine recalled that “without prompting”, Rhoda recalled the events in full, claiming that there were “scientists at the door for days afterward” as well as a reporter who waited outside the house for a considerable amount of time in an attempt to speak with her brother.

Ultimately, Heseltine, like other researchers, concluded that something very strange indeed took place in Gateshead during the spring of 1940, and while it was a “very weird story” there was something compelling about Robert Hall’s account.

Enthralled by what Heseltine had told him about Robert Hall, Richard Hall made another effort to speak with him so as to investigate the case further. He sent Robert two tickets for a talk on UFOs that he was a part of in Gateshead. Once more, Robert initially agreed to the meeting. However, once more, the day before the talk, he canceled stating he had since changed his mind.

Not to be deterred, several weeks later, Richard made one more effort to speak with Robert face to face. And this time, he was rewarded. One new detail that Richard picked up was Robert’s claim that during the second incident, when his uncle had seemingly killed the grey alien in the back alley when the military arrived later, he and his family, as well as other families on the street, were all ordered out of their houses, not being allowed to return until each of the properties had been searched. According to what Robert heard at the time, there was a concern on the military’s part that more of these strange creatures could be hiding in the houses. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, no further entities were discovered. Robert also confirmed that several “professors and scientists” would show up randomly at the family home, as well as investigators who had traveled from as far as London. His father, Robert offered, quickly became tired of the attention, and as such, the family, including Robert, ceased speaking of the curious events. Incidentally, years later, when a video of Robert’s experience appeared online, his nephew left a comment on the platform that his uncle (Robert) “always tells me this story”, and that he had no doubt that it was completely true.

With this last account in mind, it is also worth exploring another apparent alien encounter that unfolded 14 years earlier in 1926 in Bolton. The account is relayed in UFO: The Complete Sightings Catalogue by Peter Brookesmith, with the main witness once more being a young boy, Henry Thomas, who encountered three bizarre beings while playing hide-and-seek with his friends in similar backstreets to those where Robert Hall lived.

According to Henry, it was his turn to seek, and as he was creeping along the alleyway looking for any signs of his friends, he suddenly noticed one of the back gates of the houses standing open. Certain one of his friends had chosen to hide in the back garden it led to, Henry walked towards it. He moved through the open gap so as not to push the gate open further and alert his friend to his presence. However, by the time he had stepped through the gateway, he was met by a sight he was not at all prepared for.

Directly across from him, standing in front of the property's back window were three strange humanoid entities, each wearing a futuristic silver garment. Years later, Henry would state that this clothing reminded him of the appearance of the Michelin Man. Each of these beings also had a “transparent dome-like helmet” on their head that was connected to some kind of backpack with tubes.

As Henry stood there, shocked and fascinated, the three figures suddenly turned around to face him. At this point, he could see clearly inside their helmets, noticing immediately how pale their skin was. He also noted that their heads appeared to be in the shape of a light bulb, and each had a small nose with dark, black eyes. Of more concern, he could hear a bizarre gurgling sound coming from one of them. When they began in his direction, he spun around and ran out of the garden, not stopping until he arrived home.

He later stated that although he was terrorized at the time, after reflecting on the bizarre encounter, he concluded that the figures were likely not aggressive and that it was sheer panic due to the surreal nature of the situation that had caused him to run. Of course, whether these alien entities were the same that Robert Hall encounters a decade and a half later remains open to debate.  

We should remember that these are only a small snippet of the plethora of UFO and alien encounters that have unfolded in the United Kingdom. Indeed, it just might be the case that a follow-up article, perhaps titled More Lesser-Known UFO and Alien Encounters from the United Kingdom, could appear on this platform very soon so we might explore more of them. For now, though, we should perhaps contemplate just why there are so many UFO sightings in this part of the world. Is it a case that more residents in the UK are happy to report sightings, and so there are more on record? Or could it be that there is an increased UFO presence in the UK, perhaps due to the numbers of seas and oceans that surround it, which an increasing number of UFO researchers are suggesting are being used by these seemingly otherworldly crafts to traverse our planet? Whatever the truth, regular sightings and encounters continue to be reported in the United Kingdom today. If you live there or are visiting there, you just might end up witnessing one of them.

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04-11-2024 om 18:12 geschreven door peter